"FACE DECORATION."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 3, 5 January 1931, Page 3

"FACE DECORATION."

HOW IT ORIGINATED

LORD RUTHERFORD'S INGENKKW ! (From Our Own Correspondent.) | LONDON, November 20. The modern passion for research is leading us into strange byways. Here in that learned physicist, Sir Ernest (now Lord) Rutherford, unveiling secrets of the ages in a lecture to a highly sober and commercial body, the Research Association of British Paint, Colour and i Varnish Manufacturers. He suggests that it is another case of cherchez la femme when we look for the origin of the bronze age, and after it the iron age! In sober truth the scientist told the members of the association that that industry was much older than many of them thought, and they were probably not aware how much their industry had been responsible for modern civilisation. A distinguished friend of his, an anthropologist, once informed him that the use of paste paints by the ladies was really responsible for the modern scientific age. In explaining that theory, his friend said they 'iad definite evidence that the ladies at the dawn of Egyptian civilisation adorned their features with a paint made from malachite. It was easy to understand how some husband might have become irritated with his wife's adornments and thrown some malachite into a fire. Hence the copper and bronze age! • At a later age women were addicted to the use of rouge, and when rouge was thrown int i a charcoal fire, iron would result. Hence the iron age! (Laughter.) That line of argument might be fanciful, but there was one thing of which they were certain—that origin of their industry was on scientific knowledge. The distinguished New ZeaLander went on to say that if there was a time when manufacturers should adequately support the scientific side of their work it was surely in a time of difficulty like the present. There would be fiercer competition between thv. nations of the world in industry, and it was the nation that applied scientific methods most successfully that would succeed.