IN BLUNDERLAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 721, 22 July 1929, Page 11

IN BLUNDERLAND

EXAMINATION HOWLERS FRUITS OF ORDEAL SYSTEM Under the inevitable stress of the examination system children who may know better, but very often do not, perpetrate blunders which, at any rate, help to lighten the labours of the examiner. Writing in the “Spectator,” an examiner analyses his experiences, and sets on record a selection of the most entertaining howlers that have come his way. “Of all the subjects in which the examinee gives freest rein to his imagination,” he writes, “that of geography offers the widest and most delightful scope. “This is only natural,” he continues, “The world itself is so wide and so full of varied delight that imagination runs free —that imagination which the absurd rules of examination insist should he unfairly penalised for its fertility. Stony is the heart which could resist the following description (from an Irish hand) of the River .Shannon: ‘The river glides through deep ravines overlooked by hills covered with woods, where the wild deer and the fox, the panther and the otter find an almost unmolested abode, where the turtle-dove and linnet, the grouse and the badger can sing and ramble at ease.’ IN THE HIGHLANDS “Or take this composite account of the Scottish Highlands, as furnished by several hands at a recent Oxford local examination:—‘The people of the Highlands are keen sportsmen and are chiefly engaged in rifle-shooting at the grouse in the forests of Scotch fur which cover the mountains.’ But another authority maintains that ‘the moors of Scotland are noted for the sport they provide in gorse-shootiug,’ though yet a third will have it that ‘Scotland contains practically no game except sparrows of which there is a superabundance.’ “But to continue:—-‘The Highlanders have no real occupation. They inhabit caves.’ Some, however (it seems) ‘go in for sheep-rearing or are hermits,’ ‘Even now, unless there is a common clanger, the clans fight among themselves, and are very reserved,’ hut ‘the people are chiefly old people, proud of their race and their country, and they do all they can to make it a success.’ ‘They have not much intelligence.’ So now we can. place our Highland Scot. Elsewhere in Scotland they make ‘tweed from heather principally, easily procured from the heather-clad slopes of Scotland, and also from wool.’ “Ireland being a new country—at least so far as the Irish Free State Is concerned—it is right that we should have some new information about it, as that ‘an important mountain range in Ireland is the Killiecrankie Creeks’; while ‘in the Bog of Allen, where the bog is not very deep, the people cut out lawyers, and make them into peat.’ As to the housing question in Ireland, ‘the houses in the west of Ireland are made of mud, and the pigs are allowed to run amuck in them.’ Amuck, under the circumstances, seems a specially well-chosen phrase. “CARNIVOROUS FORESTS” “Again, take the case of a foreign people—the Norwegians:—‘The chief occupation of Norway consists in cutting down trees in the carnivorous forests.’ Obviously a meat diet greatly increases the height of Norwegian coniferous timber, for ‘when trees are being hewn down, the lumberers have to take care that there are no people in the way of It for at least half a mile in all directions.' “Still another industry carried on in Norway is fishing:—‘The men fish and the girls sell them.' This heartless slave-trading on the part of Norwegian women is explained, when we hear that ‘the women are not able to work as much as the men, but have important political privileges.’ Fishing is an easy job, for ‘the fish are blind, and cannot tell when they are to be caught.’ “But natural history was ever a stumbling-block to the British examinee, who will have it that ‘the plains of Siberia are roamed over by the lynx and the larynx,’ and who furnishes also an interesting account of the camel:—‘The camel can carry enough water in a pouch which it possesses, which will last it for a few weeks; from this by a passage water is passed to its hoofs, which keeps them moist and prevents them from being burnt by the hot sand.’ ‘A camel can go eight days without a drink,’ but (adds another, rollicking blade), ‘who wants to be a camel?’ SOME CYCLONE “Physical definitions are another trouble. One disciple of the New Learning states that ‘a cyclone is a wind in which there is no other like it. When a cyclone appears, the thermometer keeps going round and round and never stops; then the captain of a ship knows what is going to happen.’ “ ‘A volcano,’ states another, ‘is a mountain with a creator at the top who pours out lava’; or, as a variant, ‘many mountains were formed by eruptions when the volcano through up its lather.’ After this, one need not be surprised to hear that ‘wheat is used for straw hats and the tougher stalks for macaroni.’ Surely the examination is the last surviving example in this country of the inquiry by torture. In that light it must have been regarded by another hapless wight, of whom it was demanded: ‘Say what you know of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland,’ and desperately he answers:—‘The Grand Banks of Newfoundland are very grand.’ ”