SCOUT NOTES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 83, 24 April 1937, Page 15

SCOUT NOTES

"LITTLE

JOHN.**

"BIG SMOKE."

Domlnion Headquarters, ' No doubt most of you .have heard that our Dominion headquarters has been moved to Wellington, the capital city. Also that our Chief Commissioner, Dr. Clennel Fenwick, has resigned. Other changes in the organisation have been made, and I have been appointed Acting-Oommissioner for Training for the Dominion. This will mean that much more of my time will be taken up, and so I may not see so much of you chaps as before. I hope to get other gentlemen to help me, so that all changes will be for the betterment of scouting throughout the district. I know all you chaps — scout.ers, cubs and scouts — ■•will do your best t6 get things going again when we are allowed to open once more. Coronation. Arrangements for taking part in the celebrations will very much hinge on what happens. about the epidemic, but it is hoped to make arrangements for a combined camp-fire with the Guides. Also to arrange the selling of souvenir programmes .and treeplanting on our camp site and in public places. Weod Badge (Home Studles) Part 1, Those scouters desiring to take the home study should send in their namefl to me as soon as possible. Holland Jainboree. Three representatives are leaving New Zealand to attend the Holland Jamboree. They also intend to go to jamborees in America on their way home.

"Calling Wild Animals" (continued) I said last week that- I would continue our Chiefs yarn on animals and the triclcs of calling them, so here goesl "No Scout should ever kill an animal unless there is some real reason for doing so, and in that case he should kill it as quickly as possible so as to give it as little pain as he can. "In faet, so many big-game hunters nowadays prefer to shoot their game with a camera instead of with their rifles, which gives just as interesting results, except when you and your natives are hungry, then you must, of course, kill for food. "My brother was once big-game shooting in East Africa and had very good sport with a camera, living in the wilds, and tracking and stalking and finally snap-shooting elephants, rhinoceroses, and other big animals. "One day, he had crept up near to an elephant and had set up his camera and had got his head under the cloth, focussing it, and his native called, "Look out, sirl" and started to run. My brother poked his head out from under the cloth and found a great elephant coming for him, only a few yards off. So he just pressed the button, and then lit out and ran too. The elephant rushed up to the camera, stopped, and seemed to recognise that it was only a camera after all, and, smiling at his own irritability, lurehed off into the jungle again.

"Mr. Schilling's book, 'With Flashlight and Rdfie in Africa," is a most interesting eollection of instantaneous photos of wild animals, most of them taken at night by means of flashlight, which was eet going by the animals themselves strikiing against the wires which he had put out for the purpose. He got splendid photos of lions, hyaenas, deer of .all sorts, zebras, and other beast, There is one of a lion actually springing on to a buck. "The boar is the real King of the Jungle, and the other animals know it; he is certainly the bravest of them all. If you wateh a drinking pool in the jungle at night you will see the animals that come to it all creeping down. nervously, looking out in every direction for hidden enemiies. But when the boar comes he simply swaggers down with his great head and shiny tuslts swinging from side to side; he eares for nobody, but everybody cares for him; even a tiger at the drinking pool will give a SHarl and sneak quickly out of sight. "I have often lain out on moonlight nights to watch the animals, espeeially wild boars, in the jungle; and tit is just as good fun as merely goipg after them to kill them. "And I have caught and kept a young boar and a young panther, and found them most amusing and interesting little beggars. The boar lived in my garden and he never became really tame, though I got him as a baby. • "He would come when I called him — but very warily; he would never come to s stranger, and a nabive he would 'go for' and try to cut him with his little tusks. "He used to practise the use of his tusks while turning at full speed round an old tree stump in the garden, and he would gallop at this and round it in a figure of eight contdnuously for over five minutes at a time, and then fling himself down on his side panting with his exertions. "My panther was also a beautiful and delightfully playful beast, and used to go about wdth me like a dog; but he was very uncertain with strangers. "A dog is the most human of animals, and therefore the best companion for a man. He is always courteous, and always ready for a game — full of humour, and very faithful and loving. "Of course a Scout who lives in the country has a much better ehance of studying animals and birds than those living in a town. "Most towns have their Natural History Museum or Zoo, where a fellow can learn the appearance and names of many animals; and you can do a lot by observing in the parks or by starting a feeding box for birds at your own windqw. "If you are lueky enough to own a camera, you cannot do better than start making a collection of photos of animals and birds taken from life. Such a collection is ten times more interesting than the ordinarv boy's collection of stamps, or crests, Or autographs, which any ass can aecomplish by sitting at home and bothening other people to give. "Here is a description of a fight between a hedgehog and a viper by Mr. 4

Millais in his book on the 'Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland?' "Everyone knows that the hedgehog , is a sworn enemy of reptiles in general, and of the viper in particular; bnt very few know in what way he overcomes so dangerous an enemy. "My keeper was going his rounds one summer in a wood which was infested by vipers when he espied an enormous one asleep in the sun. He was on the point of killing it with a charge of shot when he perceived a hedgehog coming cautiously over the moss and noiselessly approaching the reptile. He then saw a curious sight. As soon as the hedgehog was wiithin reach of his prey, he seized it by the tail with his teeth; then as quick as thought rolled himself into a ball. The viper, awakened by the pain, at once turned and made a terrific dart at him. The hedgehog diid not wince. The viper, infuriated, extended itself, hissed and twisted in fearful contortions. In flve minutes it was eovered with blood, itsmouth one large wound from the spikes of the hedgehog, and dt lay exhausted on the ground. "A few more starts and it lay still. "We are apt to think that all animals are guided in their conduet by instinct, that is, by a sort of idea that is born in them. For linstanee, we imagine that a young otter swims naturally directly he is put into water, or that a young deer runs away from a man from a natural inborn fear of him. "Mr.. Long, in his book, 'School of the Woods,J shows that animals largely owe their eleverness to their mothers, who teach them while yet young. Thus he has seen an otter carry two of her young upon her back dnto the water, and, after swimming about for a while, she suddenly dived from under them, aad left them struggling in the water. ® \

But she rose near them and helped them to swim baek to the shore. In this way she gradually tauglit them to swim. "I once saw a lioness in East Africa sitting with her four little cubs all in a row watching me approach. She looked exactly as though she were teaching her young ones how to act in the case of a man coming. "She was evidently saying to them 'Now, cubbies, I want you all to notiee what a white man is like. Then, one by one, you must jump up and ekdp away with a whisk of your tail! ' I hope that we shall be able to get going soon and then I shall have more District Scouting news to give you. At present there is nothing to tell you, so that is why I have been putting in some of our Chiefs very interesting yarns.