Three Hundredth Session

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 23

Three Hundredth Session

‘THE 300th session of Nature Question Time will be broadcast on August 1, and ‘will be celebrated by having on the air as guest scientists the same two who took part in the inaugural session on May 3, 1950, A. L. Poole, now Assistant Director of Forestry, and C. J. Cutler, curator of the Wellington Zoo. Nature Question Time was the combined idea of the late Arthur P. Harper, explorer and mountaineer, and the late Mrs. Dorothy Evans, better known to listeners as Aunt Molly, of 2YA. Occupying the second half of the Children’s Session at 2YA (or 2YC when Parliament is sitting) on alternate Wednesday

evenings, this fifteen-minute programme is arranged by the New Zealand Forest and Bird Protection Society, with the co-operation of the NZBS. Until his death last year, A. P. Harper was chairman of the session, under the pseudonym of "Kauri," with R. H. Carter, Secretary of the Forest and Bird Protection Society, as "Weka," reading out the questions received from the children. These questions are answered each session by scientists present as guest speakers, and since over the years the questions have covered almost the whole field of nature in New Zealand, many of Wellington’s leading scientific authorities have taken part. Since 1950, Weka’s desk in the Forest and Bird Protection Society’s office has always had its quota of matchboxes and small packets, holding samples of the smaller local fauna. Occasionally, of course, matchboxes have proved unequal to holding the samples, and the escapees have more than once spread alarm and despondency in the female office _ staff. Some specimens have not been so small; the hip-girdle of a horse, for instance, would be very likely to incommode work on most desks, The specimens and the questions still come in in a never-ending flow-an indication of the high standard of observation: in New Zealand children, but, even more, a tribute to the popularity of Nature Question Time. In the anniversary programme on August 1, Mr. Poole will be dealing with New Zealand forests and Mr. Cutler with New Zealand fauna at the Wellington Zoo.