WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 43, 15 November 1926, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

.NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Sir Oliver. Lodge says we shouldnT b» afraid of death—not even if we have to spend our time afterwards coming back and ringing bells at Spiritualistic seances. It says' a lot for the efficiency of tire Civil Service that no one, to our knowledge, has ever yet been killed in the rush to get out of the Government Buildings at 4.30 p.m. France is annoyed because Germany, wants to conquer the lost provinces.— , But didn’t Germany have to put up with France wanting 'to do this for forty years? A bootleg ring in the United State* is now using aeroplanes to bomb opposition establishments.—Uncle Sam may run the rest of the earth, but just at present the great bootleg industry appears to run the United States. It is claimed that the City Fathers have already chucked away a third of Wellington’s city reserves.—But think of the trouble they have taken to give ,us new scenic attractions like the Northland tunnel. The geologists tell us that New Zealand in bygone ages has moved np and down m a bewildering way—at one time apparently being reduced to an anchipelago, with Ruapehu possibly spouting as a submarine volcano and at some other time one gathers being part of a long lost continent.; Nowadays she gives a qtiiver ally, arid Morrinsville, according to the news, is of opinion that it has been having much more than its fait share of this sort of thing. Morrinaville is in a part of the country that has not hitherto figured to any extent in the earthquake news, but the . geologists say that Mother Earth has tossed about uneasily in her sleep in that region in the past, pushing up the Cape Colville-Te Aroha range in the east,’ and letting the Hauraki Plains country towards Morrinsville drop down inside.

The Morrinsville shakes are -stated, to be of strength VIIL on the RossiForel scale. The Rossi-Forel scale is a rough and ready classification of earthquakes. One has to get up to degree V. to reach an earthquake that is felt generally by everyone awake. Degree VI. is strong enough to awaken sleepers, and under it “some startled persons leave their dwellings.”, Degree VII takes in shakes that cause a general panic without damage to buildings. Degree VIII brings down chimneys and cracks walls, while degree IX causes partial or total destruction of some buildings. Degree. X ropes in air great disasters; with buildings ruined, fissures in the ground, and the rock falls from ’ mountains, and the scale' leaves off there. The Wellington earthquakes of 1848 and 1855, according to the “New Zealand Official Year Book,” are the only ones that have occurred since the settlement of the connfry which can be ranked as fullstrength No. X earthquakes.

Christchurch had a No. IX shock when the top of its cathedral spire hurtled down on September 1, 1888, but the Taupo shakes which figured so largely in’ the. news four years ago. did not get beyond No. Vin strength. Seven people have been killed by earthquakes in New Zealand, three of them by a wall falling on top of them during the 1848 shake in Wellington. The fall of a chimney in Wellington’s big 1855 shake cost another life. In the Cheviot shakes of 1901 a child was killed. A lump of material fell from Masterton’s post office and killed a Maori in an earthquake there in 1913, and the next year a shepherd was killed by an earthquake in the Poverty Bay district. All the above fatalities appear to have been from being hit by something during a shake. • Whether anybody has died from fright during an earthquake seems to be left open, but may be earthquake fright,' like disappointment in love, is merely unpleasant but not fatal.

An Australian journal has been recalling that in the good old days when gold was dug up by the barrowload horses were even at times shod with the metal. Mr. Cameron, a storekeeper at the Woolsbed, New El Dorado, _the first member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly returned for the Ovens, rode into Beechworth in 1856, on a horse called Castor, which was shod with golden shoes. It is stated that the weight of each shoe was 7oz. 4dwt., and they were on the horse for three days. After that Mr. Cameron seems to have thought that he might as well have the shoes off the horse before someone else borrowed them.

New Zealand used to have a lot of wild horses roaming over the Kaiangoroi Plains, up Taupo way, but it seems that a number of American States can to-day go considerably better than anything this country ever ran to in this line. Ah Oregon commission estimates a total of 200,000 in that State. Montana has twice as many, and the numbers in Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Arizona bring the wild-horse population of the six States to the million mark, according to H. E. Harrison. He continues, in “Adventure?’ magazine: “These brutes are a scrubby lot in the. main, though some exist that are fine animats. The old breed of mustangs was incomparably better. Inbreeding is responsible for much of the degeneration.

Several examples of Mark Twain s humour are recalled in a recent article in the “Mentor”: “One Sunday morning, during his early married life in Buffalo, Mark Twain noticed smoke pouring from the upper window of the house across the street. The owner and his wife, comparatively newcomers, were seated upon the veranda, unaware of impending danger. Clemens stepped briskly across the street and bowing with leisurely politeness, said: •My name is Clemens; we cught to have called on you before, and I beg your pardon for intruding now in this informal way, but vour house is on .re.” SCARS. There is a deep serenity* in homely things— Word dark with age and scarred with daily wear, In rough coats wet with rain, in steaming muddy shoes, Or faces marked with old forgotten care. They have the strong plain breath of earthiness about them. Their feel is like the coarse black of .. /.trees • •••.. . ' : That stand deep-planted in- the warm, that knew through ages The crackling storm or sunlit drove of bees. Great souls there are who leap to flaming beauty In timeless, wind-swept realms behind the stars, But he may know, who walks in homely places, The intimate serenity of scars. —Carreta Bussey in the “Bookman”