WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 46, 18 November 1926, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

They are fighting the Free State in Southern Ireland now—with deep regret, no doubt, but. who else is there left to .fight Russia gets more like Heaven every day.—They say there is going to be no marrying or giving in marriage in that country now. Morrinsville, the much shaken, is not very far away from a region which, though stable enough -within historic times, bears striking evidence of extensive land movements in no very distant age. This is the- Lower Waikato Valley, where the. waters of the river run over the top of a sunken forest. When the river is very low the timber of the trees in this forest shows a foot or two above the water level at Rangiriri. The trees are ordinary-mixed forest trees of the same kind as grow in. the locality, and there in the Waikato to stand the remains of great kauris with their roots well below the present level of the sea.

How high this forest was above sea level when it grew is a matter of speculation. It may have been only a fewfeet, or it may have been several hundred feet. What is quite certain is that it didn’t grow below sea level, and doubtless when, the laud was moving down the Waikato Valley must have been a much more shaky place than even Morrinsville has been during the past week. The geologists report that the most recent land movement in, the Waikato Valley has been one of. uplift, and this has caused the Waikato River to cut out for itself the long trench in which it flows from Cambridge down to Taupiri. In distant ages there were volcanoes in this locality, for near Te Awamutu are the extinct volcanoes of Kakepuku and Pirongia, and out on the coast at Raglan is the great volcanic cone of Mount Karioi.

Fifteen miles or so away to the eastward from Tauranga are the Cape Colville ranges running northward from Te Aroha, and which the Geological Survey bulletins tell us consists, of volcanic rocks pushed up apparently through a great fissure in the earth’s surface. Between Morrinsville and these ranges is the Hauraki Plain, an area which has subsided. Only about four miles from Morrinsville is Maunga tapu Hill, about five hundred feet high, which is composed of volcanic rock and is thought to have been part of an old lava flow. The Waikato volcanoes are thought to have been in eruption at an earlier geological age than those in and around Auckland city, but the Geological Bulletins don’t; give us any precise dates at which these momentous things were happening in Auckland.

Is the Maori the grandfather of the original inhabitants of America? A layman can only stand aside in awe while the ethnologists struggle with these profound problems, but it seems that there is a rapid swing of opinion among the anthropologists: toward the idea that America, may have, been first peopled not by American Indians across Bering Strait but by Polynesians or Australians who dared the passage on rafts or in canoes. No sooner had Dr. Hrdlicka [Aleš Hrdlička] failed to find the expected evidence of Asiatic invasion in Alaska than Professor Mendes Correa [António Mendes Correia], the most distinguished, anthropologist of Portugal, reported to the International Congress of Americanists, which recently met at Rome, a theory which favours the idea of an oceanic crossing.

The most recent paper, that of Professor Correa [Correia] derives most of its. force from the study, of ancient South American skeletons, a mine already worked by Dr. Rivet at the same time that he investigated the languages. As others before'him Professor ’Correa [Correia] finds Polynesian affinities. He believes even that he has found evidence of pygmies. He does not envisage one Polynesian invasion of America, but many of them. Different races mayhave been represented. One may have been pygmies. The true Indians came in long afterwards, he believes, doubtless across Bering Strait or across the north Pacific, much as the conventional theory of America’s peopling now imagines.

We sympathise with the irate radio listener in London who is reported to have telephoned the broadcasting station, saying: “This it Colney Hatch (England’s best-known lunatic asylum). Are the Blanks (alleged entertainers) coming here in a taxicab or shall we send an ambulance?”

It was little Flossie’s first day at school. Her name had been registered, and the teacher asked, “Have you any brothers or sisters?” “Yes, ma’am,” answered Flossie.: “Are you the oldest one of the family?” '“Oh, no, ma’am,” returned Flossie, “father and mother’s both older’n me.”

We have not got a Christian country in which to build up a Christian industrial system.—Mr. Austin Hopkinson, M.P.

The loss of familiarity with the Bible has brought impoverishment of the language and thought - Lord Eustace Percy. I never cultivated a habit of industry myself, so I can speak with a great knowledge and experience of the value it would have been to me —Lord Birkenhead. For nearly fifty years I-have lived in the midst-of coal-miners, and there is to finer body of men in the country* —The Duke of Portland. It is my conclusion that were all incomes over £250 a year pooled it would not give each family more than five shillings a week—-Sir Josiah Stamp. A correspondent sends the following as “the latest college joke.” We had a slightly different version a year or two ago, but it bears repeating. A college boy (we. are told) sent his father the following letter:— Dear Dad,—O.K. S.O.S., L.S.D., R.S.V.P. Dad not to be beaten replied: Dear Son.-—£5 , h-w. don’t send T. B.O. THE TIME BEFORE. Just the same! The twilit room Decked about with apple bloom, Each flower a little star Falling, familiar. . . Your shadow deepening at the door Just as it did the time before. The same ? Different somehow, The bloom lies on the bough The flowers are white birds flying About the darkness, crying. Beating against the door Where fled the Time Before Returning—nevermore. —Marion Peacock.