GREEN THOUGHTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 731, 17 July 1953, Page 9

GREEN THOUGHTS

bY

SUNDOWNER

JUNE 21

HAVE spent some pleasant hours this week reading Dr. W. R. Philipson’s account of an expedition to an unexplored corner of Colombia, between the Andes and the Amazon. Since he made the journey and wrote the book Dr, Philipson has joined the staff. of Canterbury College, and I hope I may

some day meet him. but whether I do or do not

there is nothing now ‘o prevent me f@om looking at him, and it always excites me a little to see with my own eyes a man who has wandered in strange places and had experiences remote from my own. It sounded ’a little ridiculous the other day when a visiting musician was asked, in a radio interview, what he would have liked to be if he had not become a violinist, and made the surprising but sensible answer, "Perhaps a cricketer." But the interviewer’s mind worked precisely as my own usually does when I meet someone so unlike myself that he could have come from another planet. I always think ridiculous thoughts and feel like asking ridiculous questions. What did he do when he was not being a man from the moon? Did he eat the same food, wear the same clothes, think the same thoughts, wrestle with the same anxieties, fears, passions, and weaknesses as the rest of us, and when he was a boy at school was he the same vulgar little savage? I will not ask Dr. Philipson those questions if I ever speak to him, but I will find it diffi-

cult not to ask him how he likes !ecture rooms after being trailed by a jaguar in the jungle, what he thinks of roast mutton after grilled tapir, how undergraduates sound in _ ears that have "heard on the broad and open savannas, coming from the dark strips of forest a mile away on either hand, rising and falling, rolling from one end of the plain to the other, in a confused chorus, like waves tossing among rocks," the howl at dawn of Alouatta seniculus. he a *-

JUNE 22

HE longer I look at Dr. Philipson’s jungle, the stranger the jungles of tradition seem to eyes, ears, and mind. Take the eyes first. We have always been told and have never doubted, how. ever sceptical we are in general, that

a tropical jungle is a blaze of colour from daylight till dark, and from

one end of the year to the other. In fact, Dr. Philipson tells us, it is a gloomy and rather monotonous tangle of green in which flowers have to be looked for with care. They exist, of course, and are sometimes as dramatic as tradition says they are, but to see them it is necessary to cut down the trees on which they grow or fly above them in an aeroplane. Even then you do not see what you think you are going to see-thousands of varieties wagging riotous heads simultaneously. You see so few flowers relatively that if you are a botanist collecting specimens you have to search a long time

to fill your presses. The explanation | seems to be that growth, flowering, fruiting, and germination go on all the year in the tropics, but to a timetable fer each plant. It must not be thought, Dr. Philipson says impressively, that "the passage of time stands still in an uncalendared eternity." There are seasons in the tropics as in the colder zones, but never the same season for all forms of growth. In New Zealand, as in Britain, "plants march in step." In the Amazon jungle each variety has its own rhythm, and its own individual time of leaf formation and flowering. So you never see them all out together. And as it is with our eyes, so it is with our ears, Dr. Philipson found the jungle almost silent at night once the birds and insects were at rest. He seldom heard owls, and "never any movement in the forest except the sudden crash of a falling tree." On fine nights frogs might croak unceasingly, but the continuity of that noise meant that it was hardly noticed. As for the monkevs, there were months when they were not heard at all, and even the howlers were usually silent until dawn was just breaking. What we think about the jungle is determined largely by what we believe we would see and hear if we entered it. But here again it is far less unusual than tradition® makes us believe. Dr. Philipson and his companions lived in the jungle very much as they would have lived in parts of New Zealand if they had come here before the forest was clearéd. In general they were more comfortable than, say, Brunner on the West Coast, or Colenso on the Ruahines. So long as they took reasonable precautions they were in no danger from wild animals, poisonous insects, or venomous snakes; they were not seriously threatened by malaria; and their chief trouble with food was persuading someone to cook it. If I were foolish enough to ask Dr. Philipson where he would have liked to go if he had not gone to an Amazon jungle, I suspect that he would answer, "To another jungle of the same kind."

| JUNE 28

OR the third time now since she had her calf, Elsie is bellowing for a chance to risk her life again. If I remain deaf she will give no milk tonight, and very little tomorrow morning, since in this matter she has always refused to be reasonable. It is nothing to her that today is Sunday and that the owner of

the bull has probably padlocked him in_ his paddock and gone into

the city. She is not a Sabbatarian or even, I am afraid, a Christian. Till midnight, or a little longer, she ‘will go on demanding her rights without delicacy, restraint, or consideration for anybody or anything but her own comfort of body and mind: In the thousand days since I first spoke to her I have not been able to get it into her head for one day that my will and not hers must prevail inside my gate. But even if the bull were not locked in today I would not take her to see him in the absence of his owner. If he is not the biggest bull I have ever seen, he has the most baleful eye, and while it would be easy enough to slip Elsie through the gate when we arrived, I would not have the courage to drive, drag, or coax her out again. I think Elsie herself is afraid of him, and goes near him only because of the Dutch courage the Lord gives her at intervals for His own glory. But today it is my ineradicable fear against her insuperable folly, and fear wins. (To be continued)