BUTTERFLIES' WINGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 378, 20 September 1946, Page 10

BUTTERFLIES' WINGS

| (Written for "The Listener’ by DR.

MURIEL

BELL

Nutritionist

to the Health Department)

in the press about a year ago in which Professor Oliphant, the physicist who was concerned with atomic research, stated that if scientists were not allowed to have a voice in the use of scientific discoveries related to atomic energy they would turn to the study of butterflies’ wings. Perhaps the majority of readers would regard this as a mere flight of academic fancy, picturing the professor going out with a butterfly-net to retreat from the entanglements of atomic energy. However, those who have been following the researches of chemistry in the field of nutrition read into it another meaning, perhaps that Professor Oliphant would turn to a study of the prevention of disease rather than continue with research into weapons that | would destroy mankind. For, during the last few years, there have been rather significant studies of the chemistry of the pigments in the wings of butterflies, the importance of these pigments in the nutrition of bacteria and of animals, and latterly, their significance in human nutrition and the cure of certain deficiency diseases. Fresh Discoveries From a chemical jig-saw puzzle there has gradually come at least a portion of a picture; we have had to wrestle with such varying terms as "vitamin Bc," "vitamin M," the "Lactobacillus casei factor," "folic acid," and "xanthopterin" as the parts of the jig-saw puzzle. "Vitamin Bc" is that substance which prevents a certain type of anaemia found in chicks; "vitamin M" prevents a particular variety of blood disease found in monkeys; the "Lactobacillus casei factor’ is necessary for the growth of certain organisms in cheese; "folic acid" is a substance (found in spinach leaves) R aie os may recall an item

that enhances the growth of a particular kind of streptococcus; ‘"xanthopterin" is the yellow pigment found in the wings of the brimstone butterfly, a pigment which cures anaemia in trout and) also other blood disorders in animals when their dietary is deficient. A band of chemists in one of the commercial firms has put all this together and found that there are common denominators in all these substances. They have reasoned that "folic acid" is a complex substance containing a number of chemical groups. They have argued that they can put these chemical groups together to make a substance which may be useful in certain blood diseases in man. And so it has come about that still another vitamin of the B-complex has been synthesised, and that part of the compound so formed contains the same chemical substance’ as is found in the yellow pigment in butterflies’ wings. Uses for New Vitamin The new compound is showing promise of being effective in the treatment of’certain diseases in man, diseases where through absence of sufficient "folic acid" the bone marrow has not-been able to function properly in producing cells to replenish the blood, or where the intestine has not been able to rcise ~ full capacity to absorb number of diseases which were all aoe thought to, be deficiency diseases have been reported as responding to'this new vitamin. The moral of this tale is that the proper study of mankind is not always man. A great deal can be learned from studying the humblest organism, be it bacterium or butterfly; for man is part of a universe in which substances which he requires for his blood cells are no less needed by the butterfly for its ornamentation or the bird for the colour of its feathers.

(continued from previous page) evangelical terms by D. H. Lawrence. It is natural ‘to compare her with Virginia Woolf, but Virginia Woolf was a more deliberate writer, a woman with an intellectual background and with roots. She was conscious of literature, where Katherine Mansfield was more conscious of the cult of the self-purified artist. Where Virginia Woolf is precious, Katherine Mansfield is priggish. Mrs. Dalloway is wayward, but is contained by her class. She will never be entirely lost; she can assimilate the iron that enters her soul. But Miss Moss has nothing; she is hopelessly lost, between too many worlds. When Katherine Mansfield imitated Mrs. Woolf, she was a sophisticated failure. Comparison with Chekhov Before I come to the end of this talk I must refer again to the comparison with Chekhov. Chekhov is a writer of far greater variety, vitality and range than Katherine Mansfield; but there is a more important difference between the two writers and one which puts Katherine Mansfield at a great disadvantage. Chekhov, like herself, wrote of moods, comedies, tragedies and built them up to the point of crystallisation. They crystallised in a cry, a phrase, a gesture, a moment of feeling or vision. Like her he often concentrated on the irrational and erratic moments of personal life and usually discarded the architecture of a contrived plot. But there is a binding element in his stories; behind his characters, though it may never be mentioned, Chekhov always conveys the sense of a country, a place, the sense of the unseen characters, the anonymous people who surround even our most private moments. Now Katherine Mansfield rarely does this. I rather think that only one of her stories-an early one about New Zealand life called "The Woman at the Store’’-achieves this suggestion of a containing world. If you look again at "At the Bay," which I think is one of the minor masterpieces of our language, you find yourself asking: "Who are these people? Where do they live? What world do they belong to?" They seem to have dropped from the sky. Whereas in a story like Chekhov’s "The Steppe’) there is something else besides the mystery of life and death. Or rather Chekhov knows that the mystery of life and death is not something just floating about freely in the air, but has the indispensable connotation of time and place. In Chekhov there is a country; Russia, the condition of Russia, the effect of Russia, the breath of Russia, is the silent character always haunting us. This leads one to the conclusion that what is called the plotless short story, the kind of short story which depends upon its power to suggest, must suggest that its gaps and silences are filled by things more powerful, more abiding than itself. There is no such thing as sensibility in the void. Too often we feel that there is nothing behind Katherine Mansfield’s stories, and that is a reflection of her own rootlessness. It is, of course, idle to blame or to praise writers for limitations which may be due to their position in the society of their time. We have the virtues of our shortcomings and the best writing is invariably that which is the fruit of total disadvantages, the struggle with almost insuperable difficulty. We can see how, driven by invalidism and loneliness, Katherine Mansfield was forced into endless technical experiment; and to the technique of writing short stories she made a major contribution.