WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 113, 10 February 1928, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM [During the absence on holiday of “T.D.H.,” “Notes at Random” will be contributed by “Wi.”J The Government Entomologist has placed the sandfly “next on the list” lor attention. Atter that, we hope, the motor-cyclist. The Wellington City and Suburban Highways Board seems to have some doubts about the speed limit on the Hutt Road. We haven’t. A wireless expert has just handed a fresh problem to the world. “Wireless messages,” he says, “are never lost. So far as we can say at the moment they may go on for ever, of course getting fainter and fainter as the time goes by. We have actually trapped a message which we have sent out on its third circuit round the world. If wireless continues to develop at its present rate it is not too much to say that 100 years hence people will be able to pick up messages we are transmitting to-day. Imagine what that means. Real voices from the grave of many famous men who in the ordinary course of nature cannot expect to be alive 100 or even 50 years Irom now. Their voices are still wandering in the ether waiting to be picked up by a sufficiently sensitive instrument.” He: “Billy the Kid, the famous Arizona desperado, killed nineteen men before he was twenty-one.” She: “What kind of a car did he drive?” The head and vertebrae of an unidentified monster was recently thrown up by a storm on the coast of Elgin, and it was suggested that it might have come from one of the North Sea “graveyards.” The "graveyards,” as the fishermen call them, are believed by geologists to represent portions of a channel which was filled by the Rhine when there was a land connection between Britain and the Continent of Europe. A well-marked portion of this old channel remains at the bottom of the sea about fifteen miles east of Grimsby, and is known as the Silver Pits. About twenty-three miles long by about two miles wide, the Silver Pits are full of fossils, and the bones of the cave bear, elk, bison, rhinoceros, and mammoth are so frequently trawled up by the fishermen that many of them use such finds for ornamenting their rock gardens. A fish-salesman’s office in the Lowestoft trawl market has its walls covered with these strangely recovered relics of the distant past.

A correspondent with an instinct lor statistics has been looking into the “figures of speech,” which made the last session of the New Zealand Parliament one of the longest on record. It took 51 Hansards to report the debates. A little arithmetic reveals that this amounted to 77,314 inches of reading matter, or one mile and 288 yards of talk. Placed end to end, the lines of tvpe would reach 24 miles SO yards. This was the largest product by 14 numbers of Hansard in recent years. The gentleman who is responsible for the above statistics adds the following comment: —

“Even Mr. Holland admits it was a long and arduous session. He should be honest enough to admit that he and his party are responsible for some miles of useless talk. One cannot help feeling for Mr. Holland, for it is the general impression that he gets but little if any sleep. Those of us who can look back six or seven decades have a very vivid recollection of a certain rather high Government official who could not sleep. He would walk about his room, taking notes occasionally for next day, as to whom 116 would crush. His whole conduct was such ■t he juust have considered that he, and he alone, was responsible for the movements of all matters pertaining to New Zealand. Alas, what a wretched end!”

After reading the above, we felt inclined to take down these 51 numbers of Hansard, and run the rule over the Labour Party’s output of verbiage. But tlie weather was too hot for a task of such magnitude. “Sandy, dear, gin Ah were to dee, how d’ye think ye’d manage?” “Ah, Jean, dinna talk like that. Gin ye were to dee, Ah should gang mad.” “An’ would ye ever marry agin, Sandy ?” “Weel, no, Jean. Ah dinna think Ah should gang as mad as a’ that.” An amusing company “prospectus” is going the rounds. The object, it is stated in the prospectus, is to promote a cat-skin industry on a large scale to supply the fur trade: — “The object’ of the said company is to operate a large cat ranch near Taupo, where land can be purchased cheaply for the purpose. To start with, we want a million cats; each cat averages about twelve kittens a year; the skins run from 6d. each for the white ones and 2s. 6d. for the pure black ones. This will give us 12,000,000 skins per year to sell at an average of Is. 6d. per skin, making our revenue £25.00 per day. A man can skin 180 cats per day at 15s. per day wage, and it will take 40 men to operate the ranch; therefore the net profit will be £2475 per day. We feed the cats on rats, and start a rat ranch. The rats multiply four times as fast as cats, so that we must start with a million rats, and we shall have four rats per day per cat; then we shall feed the rats on the carcasses of the cats from which the skins have been already taken, giving each rat one-quarter of a cat. It will be seen that the business will be self-supporting throughout. The cats will eat the rats, and the rats will eat the cats, and we shall have the skins.”

The white elephant that people in this country are familiar with is mostly a monument to past errors of judgment on the part of our politicians. The white elephant of Siam, however, is in a very different category’—a real, live, and highly ceremonial fact, welcomed by the good Siamese as a happy omen of the future prosperity of their country. Enormous crowds watched the recent arrival in Bangkok of a new white elephant, which was born in captivity about a year ago on a teak estate of the Borneo Company, near Chiengmai, in the far north of Siam. Actually, of course, white elephants are not white. The correct, translation of the Siamese is “albino elepliant,” and the best specimens known have been a pink-grey’ colour with pink eves. The present one is copper-col-oured, and it is predicted that he will become lighter as he grows up. destiny. Who, walking in the spring, shall see, New green upon the poplar tree, And smiles with. hope as he goes by— Is servant of his Destiny. Who, walking in the summer fields Sees all the gold of harvest-yields, And labours ‘ here unceasingly— Is comrade of his Destiny. But who can see the beauty fade In noble works that God hath made, And keep faith bright in liis soul’s eve— Is master of his Destiny. —Marv Matheson, in the “New Outlook,”- .Toronto,