Why Not Experiment?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 25, 15 December 1939, Page 34

Why Not Experiment?

Talking of elephants, I met a man the other day who had travelled and explored in Central Africa-and one of the strange foods he’d eaten was stewed elephant trunk! Another was roast rhinoceros’ foot; another, roast wild donkey; another, stewed monkey! Roast water rat is a great delicacy -a real party dish-and is eaten with head tail and all. Boiled hippo’ tongue is another strange food. It has to be stewed for forty-eight hours in order to make it sufficiently tender. I have eaten octopus in Spain and found it very good indeed. The outback Australian assures us that Kangaroo tail is excellent. We consider whitebait good, too, don’t we, Well, a dish that was provided by an African chief as the most special one of all was not really very different-it was thousands of white ants, frizzled in their own fat. I wonder whether you could persuade mother to experiment with her cooking. Money A country’s hundredth birthday is such an important event that ‘suitable ways of commemorating it have to be found. For New Zealand’s Centennial, the people who make the coins we use every day decided to issue some new ones. So, perhaps by the time this copy of The Listener reaches you, some of the bright shiny new coins, fresh from the Mint, will be in your pockets, Ask Daddy if he has a new one when he gives you your pocket-money. As you probably know, coins have a fascinating history. New Zealand is too young a country to have any historical coins herself, but in England scientists are still finding the money used by the old Romans; you read about talents in the Bible; but did you know that among some native races, salt has been used as coinage? After all, money is just a convenient, common article for exchange. If you want to give some of your mutton for some of your neighbour’s vegetables, you do it through the medium of money.