Cold and Frosty Mornings

New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 989, 1 August 1958, Page 18

Cold and Frosty Mornings

JULY 10

ee HY don’t the cows run round the paddock to get warm?" Ng. asked me one morning when the thermometer showed twelve degrees of frost. The answer of course was "Because they are cows and have cows’ brains." The day will come, in one or two or ten million years, when a cow genius will discover the exercise path

to comfort, but no cow has lighted on it yet. No cow, no horse, no sheep, no pig,

no cat, and I think no dog. Dogs do run wildly round on frosty mornings under the stimulus of sudden liberty, and the exercise of course brings them heat; but they do the same thing on summer mornings when they are already uncomfortably hot. It must however be remembered that wild animals are not reduced to these periods of standing and waiting which we impose on our domestic animals. When they are not sleeping they are moving about looking for food and usually are compelled to expend a good deal of energy in getting it. No one ever saw a wild buffalo waiting under a tree for a bellyful of grass or a wild pig trotting backwards and forwards on a path three yards long while he grunted and squealed for his breakfast. The first thing we do to an animal that we do not kill outright is to rob it of liberty. In return for this loss we give it food and drink; but we give these in our own time and in our own way, and it is a lucky animal that is never kept waiting. In winter waiting means standing at a gate shivering if you are a horse or a cow, lying shivering in a cold box

if you are a dog, and even if you are a sheep that no fool has robbed of its fleece, standing or lying on frozen ground till the hay or turnips arrive. Of the animals that live always above ground wild pigs come nearer than any others I can think of to an intelligent

use of shelter. Dogs understand what to do to get away from wind and rain, but they do not deliberately cover them-

selves or cuddle down together. Pigs select their ground, make _ their beds, often a foot or more: deep of dry tussock, and bury themselves close enough to one another to share the animal heat. It is a highly intelligent performance carried through without intelli-

gence on the human level; though it is difficult not to allow some thought to an animal that makes his bed in winter in a gully in deep scrub or bush and in summer makes a new bed in the open, preferably on a ridge where the cool breezes can reach him. The only. intelligence my cows show in winter is to get out of the wind where that is possible and climb on frosty nights to the dry tussocks on top of the hill. But they are not often intelligent enough to stay up there till it pleases me to call them to breakfast. Pa a * "HE recent destruction by fire of four tourist hotels. is a sharp reminder of the risk of carrying luxury beyond the reach of its safeguards. Whether it is necessary to make people more comfortable in the wilderness than they commonly are ‘at home depends on whether it is necessary to bribe rich foreigners to come here to look at us. I take a dim view of tourism as a means of helping a self-reliant community, (continued on next page)

JULY 12

and if such issues were left to me-"right-thinking people" will be glad that they are not-mountain hotels would be as comfortable as they should be to meet the needs of average New Zealanders; and no more than that. I don’t want to see an eating or drinking or gambling or dancing house at every bend on our lakes and an army of uniformed servants holding out their hands for our money. I have not forgotten the shame

I felt in Scotland when one morning in the Highlands three pipers approached me,

not together but separately, advertising a near-by tourist spot and in the meantime holding out their caps for tips. I hope I will never see that in New Zealand or, worse still, see, as I saw in Scotland and in America, natural features bought by business men and forbidden to the public except on payment of a fee. If New Zealand .can’t attract visitors on other than mercenary terms I hope it will do without them. | But fire everywhere’ is destruction, waste, and sadness. Whether it destroys a hotel or a private house it is a home that goes and not merely a building. We sweep away the ashes and start again, but we do not go back to the beginning again. We can’t. We can rebuild but never replace. * * ca

JULY 15

HAD. to think hard the other day when "Morton’s Fork" appeared in the news and I was asked what it was. I knew that it was. not a table fork or a gardening fork, a tuning fork, a hay fork, a fork for digging potatoes, or a division on a river or road. But it was some time before I remembered that it was an

instrument of taxation, and even then I could not recall who used it, and when. Though I have now chased Morton through two cyclopaedias and one biographical dictionary, I still know very little more about him than that he was an astute gentleman who contrived nearly 500 years ago to get himself made Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor simultaneously, and to make a disgraceful use of both offices. His fork worked because he had the power to

make it work, and no scruples about the consequences. It was like ordeal

by water or by fire. You either perished or you proved your guilt by coming out. Morton’s job being to rob, he ‘did it neatly by dividing his victims into two groups-those whose showy way of life proved their opulence, and those whose frugality indicated that they must have

grown rich by their economies. It was extortion and theft by a Cardinal with a grin on his face that increased the offence to God and man. But God in Henry the Seventh’s court forgave most sins committed in His name, and man existed to do anything and everything that cardinals and kings demanded. I don’t know whether it tells for or against Morton, if it is established, that he used the fork but did not invent it. Some scholars, including apparently Erasmus, credit another man of God with the invention, Bishop Fox, who was a contemporary of Morton’s serving the same king. Both lived for 80 years and went, I feel sure, to the same place. I hope that Mr Nordmeyer, who has been charged with digging up the fork, will not defend it historically. (To be continued)