Full Fathom Eleven

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 733, 31 July 1953, Page 9

Full Fathom Eleven

by

SUNDOWNER

JULY 10

E seem at last to have found water at a price. It is not clear water yet, or free flowing, but there is enough to fill our tanks and troughs if it stays where it is-too far below the surface for indirect pumping, but constant at its own level under the drain of a deep-water pump. I suppose I should be satisfied with that and cease worrying. In my way I am, and up to a point I have. But I réalise more fully than I

did before that wells are swords hanging on threads. They may re-

main as they are for 5U years, and they may collapse any moment without warning or apparent excuse. The explanation, geologists tell us, is that the solid earth is an illusion. It is not solid and not firm. The crust is constantly quaking and shaking in response to stresses and strains, and the mobility in New Zealand must be high. I am far enough away from a city to escape the vibration of traffic, but I am only a few million years away from an active wolcano, and 15 miles away from‘the sea with its heaving waves and tides. I don’t know how violent the storm would have to be on the coast to start vibrations. round the foot of my two-inch pipe moré than a chain below the surface; more violent, imagine, than "we would remember afterwards; but the replacement of a few ounces of rock or clay would put me back where I was a month ago with a muddy corner instead of grass at my front gate and considerably less in my pocket. x ue *

JULY 14

INCE we must endure what we can’t cure, I usually pay bills promptly and forget what I pay over the counter. But I find myself still dwelling on the cost of my well and pump. It is not so much that I had to spend 50 per cent more than I had estimated. That was a blow, but hardly a call to arms. What really annoyed me, and rankles still, is the fact that paying the piper gave me

no control over the tune. I never got what I wanted when I wanted

it, and the more I surrendered the more I paid, It is the kind of horse play that leaves me cold. But this is not a complaint. It is a lament. We complain when we have hope of redress. When there is no hope we weep or moan. I am*moaning-not over my bills and payments but over the excuses: for them. I am one of the excuses myself. I am not satisfied with what would have satisfied me once. I want an easier life; more comfort, léss labour, a bigger return for my labour, more jam. So does the man over the fence, and the other man over the next fence. I was poor when I was young, and I am poor still; but my poverty now is the poverty of a lost cause. I have struck my flag, dropped my gun, and joined in the rush down the steep place. I spend as I go, ease up when I can, do nothing thoroughly, and demand no thoroughness in others. When we had to we all worked and saved, When. our jobs were in danger we watched them. When _ distractions were few we-stayed at home. When our coats lost colour we turned them. Then we joined the revolution. We cut hours

out of our day, a day out of our week, weeks out of our year. We ate better, slept better, dressed better, took more care of our eyes; our ears, our hands, our muscles. We demanded risk money, dirt money, holiday money, money for warmth and cleanliness. It was all necessary, nearly all good, and most of it centuries overdue. But instead of putting a little more into our work to maintain the balance, we took our surplus time and energy home and threw them away. We thought we could mock God -live soft and not get flabby. It is one of the oldest games in history, and I have played it more often than most people. But I am now a payer and not a player. The other fellow is playingreaping where he has not sown, taking where he has not given, collecting where ‘he has left nothing of value lying about. But I don’t want to shoot him, I just want him to know what the Quaker told the man who was cutting his throat -that he haggles. * # ; *

JULY 15

T does not surprise me that fertility falls with domestication, but it surprises me that it falls so far. I have two. barren ewes in 80, one a pet whose life has been watched from her first day. Of my two cows one has "returned" twice without any invasion by Brucella abortus. The fact that our cat gets no

Kitten means no more, I imagine, than exceptions to established rules

usually mean, since she is, the only naturally barréh cat I have known; but I am surprised at the low fertility in our hen-house. Our fowls are regularly fed, males and females alike, and get half of every day in the open. There they have

> > access to fresh grass, grubs, worms, slaters, spiders, and earwigs, and the hens are certainly not neglected by the roosters. But we have never had a dozen chickens from a dozen eggs. A neighbour who keeps fowls for profit insists that 100 per cent is an impossible standard of fertility in'eggs, and says that he is happy with 80 per cent. But it is not an impossible standard with birds in the wild. I have seldom seen an infertile egg left after a hatching of sparrows, starling, thrushes, blackbirds, goldfinches, or larks. It must

happen oftener than we realise, since no one examines more than a decimal percentage of the nests in his neighbourhood, and the absence of eggs is in any case not proof that’ all the eggs laid in that nest were fertile. But if we find only empty nests year after year it at least suggests high fertility. The causes of infertility are, of course, legion: anatomy, physiology, diet, age, climate, and I think psychology, too. Roosters multiply their attentions to some hens and neglect others, Rams turn away from some ewes. Stallions, as every stud-master knows, are temperamental with some mares. In the wild such couples would probably not come together at all. But.I suspect that another reason is the elementary and greedy mistake of putting too many

females with one male. I have never seen a stag in possession of more than a handful of hinds-seven or eight sometimes, ten or twelve sometimes, but never 40 or 50, the ration we allow our rams. Even when allowance is made for the ease with which a ram finds food, and for the generally enforced proximity of the ewes, this discrepancy seems too great. It has never seemed healthy to me to eliminate as many natural impulses as we can, and as many natural checks, and reduce mating to the factory level. (To be continued) a