SCIENCE v. TAXPAYERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 671, 16 May 1952, Page 9

SCIENCE v. TAXPAYERS

by

SUNDOWNER

APRIL 13

FOUND myself wondering today why we have not in a hundred years produced a Robert Cushman Murphy. We have produced world-distinguished chemists, botanists, geologists, an internationally famaqus physicist, and one or two outstanding. ethnologists; but I can’t think of a biologist who has writ-

ten as luminous a comment on our. changed

and changing animal and plant life as Murphy’s paper from which I quoted two or three days ago. It is not that we lack the talent or can’t give the training, and I don’t think it is because we are still too close to the trees to see the woods. It is, I suspect, because we drive our first-class minds. too hard to let them look about. them. Murphy is attached to an institution that counts neither money nor time, that does not need to fount them, when it has a problem to master. Here science works for taxpayers who call continuously for results. It produces results, week by week and month by month, but dare not stretch its months into years. I find it depressing, and humiliating, to think that a millionaire can be a better friend to science than a million men anid women sharing their work and their wealth and pooling their margins for the common good. Even when ‘he is truth’s enemy, suppressing facts and stifling opinions that threaten his dollar empire, a millionaire is not so dangerous as a man with a vote in the back of his mind and ignorance and suspicion in the front. There are a thousand rich men in the United States who could be persuaded to print and_ circulate Murphy’s pamphlet if it had a message for America. It has a message for New Zealand, clearly, wisely, and courteously

\ expressed; but no Government department will circulate it in case a question is asked in Parliament.

APRIL 14

\JHEN I heard of the death of Mrs. Alley-mother of Rewi and in so many hidden ways responsible for him -it was like hearing that a tree had fallen on a perfectly calm day. When I first met her 25 years ago she had, I now know, turned 60. I suppose, if I had looked closely at her and thought

for a moment, I would have realised how old she was. But age was

something that did not enter my mind

at all as I sat talking to her; except negatively. I must have been aware of time subconsciously, since I came away feeling that I had met an ageless woman; a woman neither young nor old, but standing quite still in a pool of serenity and wisdom. It was such a strong impression that her death Has not yet weakened it, and I don’t think it would have disappeared if I had seen her during the last five years. No one can, or if he could, would, make clear even to himself what passes through his mind when he meets a woman perfectly poised physically and mentally. He dare not, having had a mother, allow himself to wish that this had been his mother. He must pull his thoughts back before they roam as far as that, as I am sure I did at that first meeting. But I must have allowed them to range a little or I would not have retained all these years afterwards that still sharp impression that I had seen a perfect mother, neither a Martha nor a Mary, but a blend of both, competent and assiduous in all material ways, and at the

same time unruffled by the stresses of mind and spirit that rack every parent whose children are originals and not patterns. * * x

APRIL 17

AST year one of my ewes had been so badly struck by flies when I took delivery that I killed her at once and buried her. Two or three more were struck lightly, but recovered after treatment. This year I have escaped alto-gether-chiefly, I suppose, because my flock has not in two months been wet.

But I have seen some horrible examples of the speed at which maggots}

multiply if treatment is delayed. Jim, who is much quicker to detect trouble than I am, both in the yards and in the paddock, and who has a holding dog, missed a ewe two or three days before he dipped, and when he discovered her 48 hours later she was a mov-

ing mass of putretaction | from her hip to her shoulder, and from her belly line almost to her spine. The most accurate description I can give is to say that her side, when the wool was removed, was like a dirty slab of honeycomb with three cells for every one bees would have made. I thought Jim would kill her at once, but he knew better than I did, and in 24 hours she was clean. I don’t know what the next stage would have been-whether the maggots would have moved into the flesh and consumed it or whether they would have grown sufficiently before that to drop off and enter the ground. In both cases the sheep would have died miserably; but what astonished me as much as the mass of maggots and the area affected was the vigour and apparent unconcern of the

victim. The day after she was clear we drove her three miles to a dip and three miles back and she travelled as well as the rest of the flock. This is a disgusting entry, but not quite so disgusting® as that ewe’s seething side. In any case, horrors of this kind are part and parcel of a shepherd’s life nowadays. I never heard of fly-strike when I was a boy,.and I don’t know when it first became a menace. But. if I were tempted to suppose that it is an evil of recent appearance I would have to forget the Bible, Virgil, and this fable that I came on recently when I was looking for something else. I think I gave a variant, perhaps the original, in a note written about a year ago: One hot day in summer, a boar, covered with wounds, threw himself. beneath ° the shadow of a large trée, where he was grievously tormented by innumerable swarms of flies. A fox who was passing by drew near, and good-naturedly offered to drive away the obnoxious insects. "Let them alone, my friend,’ said the boar; ‘these flies are glutted, and unable to do me much further injury. But if they dre driven off, others will supply their places, and at this rate I shall not have a drop of blood left in my body.’ (To be continued)