The More We Change...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 945, 20 September 1957, Page 24

The More We Change...

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SUNDOWNER

AUGUST 26

OT many farmers, I think, N know how many lambs they lose, or acknowledge their known losses in full. If they admit five per cent I feel fairly sure that it is six or seven or eight, and sometimes ten, as I feel sure when a gambler confesses to a loss of ten pounds at the races that he has lost

fifteen pounds’ or twenty. The truth has to be — sensa-

tional to make most of us stop playing tricks with it, and some of us are not safe then; though I find it easier to accept a very heavy lambing loss than @ very small one. With a flock as small as mine it is, of course, easy to check the losses and more difficult to conceal them. So far, with lambing about half complete, I have lost seven lambs (and one ewe) eut of 40 born alive-a total of 171% per cent. It has been an outstandingly favourable season, my ewes, though old, are in good shape, and they have not been short of feed or shelter. Though I have still 100 per cent left I should have thought, if I had not recorded. each death, that my loss had been five or six per cent, and should probably have given that figure if I had been asked for one. ~

I have, in fact, lost twice as many as I should have lost with average luck, and three times as many as the unavoidable losses with healthy sheep and good husbandry. But I have not lost three times as many as two out of three of my neighbours, or twice as many. I have lost about the district average for my grade of sheep-far more than any of us should have lost, and twice as many as most of us admit, but about as many, my diary tells me, as everybody should expect who begins with the cast-offs of other farmersxand regards them with a castoff -mentalitv.

AUGUST 27

RS % * HE more we change the more we ~ don’t change, and can’t, as a witty Frenchman told us over 100 years ago. When I was-a boy the cure for colds was a few drops of pain-killer in hot milk. The cure for sprains and bruises was a few drops of painkiller rubbed in with oil. The cure for toothache was pain-killer on a

wad ofr cotton-wool. Nothing else was tried, and nothing

else was necessary. Then pain-killer gave way to a concoction we called ' electric essence, which was used in the same fashion for the same complaints;

though the essence found its way into stables and cowsheds more often than the killer did, I suppose because it was cheaper. That is looking back 50 years, and a little more. But if we look back four fifties and a little more, with someone to direct us, we _ shall find farmers doing the same thing precisely in England as farmers were doing in Otago seven or eight generations later-apply-

ing the same cure for everything from scalds and bruises to boils and housemaid’s knee. I have been reading a book sent by a friend in Hamilton, and find that as far back as 1748 farmers were buying "a balsamick Tincture" that not only "cured all Bruises, Strains, Burns, Scalds, and green wounds, but also stopped the most obstinate Bleeding at the Nose." It did more than

that. If "any Arteries were wounded or quite cut im two, if the Brain was wounded quite through, either lengthways or breadthways, or the Eye pierced in the very Pupil or Sight," Ellis’s sam would "so agglutinate the Parts" that a cure was effected in one or two days. Well, that beats Pain-killer. But Ellis could also beat Aunt Daisy (or very nearly) im getting his balsam where he knew it eught to be: in the house of every farmer. For as we are all liable to Accidents, a receive a mortal Damage, or bleed to th, before a Surgeon can be had. I th have just Reason to observe, that a Farmer especially ought never "to be without this Balsam; because in the Use of Scythes, Chaff-engines, Knives, Teaping and other cutting Hooks and Sickles, Hedge-Bills, and Axes, etc., etc., men are more than ordinarily liable to cut and bruise themselves, and also to be hurt by the Kicks of Horses, Falls from Carts, Waggons, Cocks and Mows of Corn and Hay, Trees, etc., ete. Which most excellent Liquid Balsam I furnish any Person with, in Bottles sealed up, at one Shilling each, with printed Directions for its Uses. Because Mr Ellis was too good a business man to say how his balsam was prepared, the prescription has been lost for ever; but if that had not happened our ancestors might have lived for ever, and then I am not sure where we ourselves would have been, a *

AUGUST 30

\ THEN TI saw six live rabbits today in less than 600 yards, I was reminded that I saw six dead rabbits two or three weeks ago on a roadside in North Otago all within about six chains. Though I did not stop to examine them, they all seemed recently dead, and lay at intervals too evenly spaced for accidents. I suspected an exhibit by the local Rabbit Board-

a variation on the mummified — exhibits on wire fences by

which farmers used to advertise their good citizenship a few years ago. As the rabbit population stands in some areas, six is probably a good kill. It was six times as many rabbits as I saw, living or dead, anywhere else between Christchurch and Balclutha. But I am waiting to see the South Island’s last rabbit in the Otago or Canterbury Museum, When we are allowed to see it only in the presence of an attendant, and on no account to handle it, we shall know that our cunning and our ‘fear have triumphed at last over the rabbit’s terrifying fecundity,

AUGUST 31

HIS exciting note reached me this morning from Dunedin: I courited 14 wood-pigeons flying from one berrying tree to another at the Gardens gate as I was awaiting a bus at the foot of Opoho Road, One or two are not infrequent visitors to a tree im my back garden at Opoho, and pass overhead every day. Though the letter carries neither a name nor a date nor an address, the. writer indicates that he lives in Opoho, 4

and that happens to be the Dunedin suburb I still remember

most clearly. Fourteen pigeons would | be a sensation in any part of New | Zealand in 1957--even in the remote bush-and to see as many as that feeding together near. a city bus terminus, and not far away from the noise of bulldozers and earth-moving lorries is what Americans call "something." It is an event that I can neither explain ner understand, since I can’t forget that pigeons lay only one egg, take a month to hatch it, and very nearly two months to rear the young. I will not try to explain the situation, or pretend to understand it. I will just thank my correspondent for the best bird news I have had for, I think, several years, (To be continued)

C L~ Fippb 2CS

(C) Punch