FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 846, 14 December 1929, Page 10

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

TOWARD THE MILLENNIUM Commissioner Mcllveney has instructed the police to pros&aste people buying or selling fireworks without a permit. If in fashion pyrotechnic You propose to hold a picnic, It's essential that you first obtain a permit, And set out upon a docket Every jumping jack and rocket, With a duplicate in carbon to confirm it. It is not that counting fuses The detective force amuses, Or that policemen get a thrill from checking fireworks; Here’s the truth —and it’s a show down — They detest each bomb and throw-down — And would fain devote their lives to rather higher works. But instructions are explicit— Pin wheels, crackers, are illicit; Every Guy Fawkes celebration is a scandal. Watch your step, oh urchins crying, With your effigies a-guying, And register that penny Roman candle ! PAKt DiSE REGAINED The evolution argument in Auckland seems to have died a natural death, but a cablegram yesterday, to the effect that a Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn claims to have discovered the Garden of Eden in the Gobi Desert, appears to contain sufficient fuel for a renewal of this entertaining controversy, not only here, but elsewhere. As usual with scientific announcements, a scientist as eminent as Dr. Osborn has weighed in with a counter-blast which states in express terms that there never was any Garden of Eden, and that, as they say in the courts of law, if there was one, it certainly was not located in the Gobi Desert. Moreover, Professor Grafton Elliot Smith, who is conducting the opposition to Dr. Osborn, asserts that he has positive evidence that man is connected with the gorilla, though unless he can produce equally positive evidence that there were no gorillas in the Garden of Eden, this does not seem very helpful to his case. COMMON GROUND In the dim geological past the Gobi Desert was covered by the eastern portion of an immense sea, of which the Caspian and the Mediterranean .are modern relics. To the north-east was the ancient continent of Angaraland, and to the south that of Gondwanaland, two names which inventive scientists perhaps created to impress the imaginations of susceptible laymen. Anyway, the Gobi sheltered dragons and prehistoric monsters of all shapes, and there is no particular evidence that gorillas were not among the less formidable creatures that browsed in its mysterious jungles. If that is the case, there seems no particular reason why opposing schools of scientists should not come to an amicable understanding. Antievolutionists will abandon their search for the missing link, and concede that a Garden of Eden actually did exist, but only on the understanding that fundamentalists make a corresponding concession by agreeing that Adam and Eve may have been shaggier, a little less cultured, and a little more gorillalike than we have imagined in the past. THE LAST MAGNET Unless an agreement is reached on the lines suggested, it is improbable that the location of Eden will be considered settled. Various accounts have placed it in Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt. One scientist identifies it with the sacred Babylonian garden at Eridu, the river which watered it (Gen. 2, 10) being the Persian Gulf. Another account places Eden on the delta of the Nile, near the modern Kantarah. All these have been sponsored quite as confidently as Dr. Osborn’s Gobi Desert theory, so the general inference will be that the last has not been heard of the matter. Indeed, one rather fancies that the search for the Garden of Eden will become one of the principal targets of exploration during the next decade or so. After all, it is one of the few really worth-while purposes that remain to make an exploring career worth living. The North Pole has been discovered, and the South Pole, too, has laid its secrets bare. Fortunately for the conscientious explorer, the Garden of Eden is still in the ring—that is, unless Commander Byrd performs the unexpected, and discovers it at the South Pole. # * * THE COUNTRY LAD There is a refreshing flavour about a message from Invercargill which states that at the recent Royal Show a “country lad’’ was relieved of £ 7 at a game of “dodger.” It does not much matter what “dodger” is, the principal source of satisfaction being evidence that the unsophisticated "country lad” in town for the show, has not only not disappeared, as we had feared, from the face of the earth, but is even capable of finding his irresolute and faltering way into the news and making a human interest story.