PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 117, 20 May 1933, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Algernon Phillips Withiel Thomas, professor emeritus Auckland University will be the subject of special honour at the college jubilee celebraNO. 388! tions, which commence y ■ to-morrow. He was one of the original staff of professors who set the University College going in 1883, in conditions of appalling inadequacy. Fortunately, he was gifted not only with inexhaustible enthusiasm, but with rare teaching ability and amazing powers of work. For many years he took biology and geology, including botany and zoology, and his students, many of whom moved on to important positions in the world of science, testify to his unremitting zeal. He organised many field days for his students, and he himself went all over New Zealand in .search of scieniific information. In between whiles he did jobs for the Government—such as reporting oh the Tarawera eruption—and research work of his own. He is a noted gardener, with a particular penchant for daffodils. Born in 1857, he was educated in Manchester, and went to Balliol, Oxford; He was a professor at Auckland University College from 1883 to 3914. In liis retirement he has given most of liia time to tlio affairs of various schools under the Grammar School Board, of which he has long been chairman.

About nine in every ten sexagenarians, careless of the flight of time, remark-" occasionally to their fellow men, "I feel as good V -• ' as I did 20 rears ago— ZEST OF .YOUTH, have another." There is the case of the . dear, good chap, no longer in his teens, who used to play golf. For the past ten years he has played mostly with an excellent car, and the other day he found himself at the home of a smart young golfer who plays like an angel. The lad persuaded him on to the links, and there the young sexagenarian, renewing his youth, whanged away, missed the divots—and went round in 81. The clever young golfer, with an almost imperceptible twinkle in his eye, moving in inter-suburban golf society, did not forget to mention the sporting resurrection of his old friend, remembering to say that he had gone mind in SI. Since which the revived sexagenarian -lias lived a busy life, listening to congratulations, receiving challenges from men lie had almost forgotten, and receiving congratulatory messages through the telephone. On several occasions he has left that excellent ear in the garage and has set out on a long walk with a sparkle in his eye, his shoulders thrown back, and a boyish smile on his intelligent face. At a moment when bowls would seem to call, and his sixtieth birthday looms, he has thrown back the years and may be heard to inquire if Gene Sarazen is likely to come to New Zealand; because—

The penetrating aroma of deceased game birds, and tho occasional sight of a hero standing with a gun alongside a fence smothered with de a d THE " SPORTS." ducks, makes one wonder if the seasonable pastime might not be made even more delectable in order to include among the sporting public mother and the wee ones. We already have news that the English "mallard" is so tamo that it feeds with tho family fowls, and now it is reported ijrom Thames that at the A.A.S. meeting strong exception v.-as taken "to increase the limitation of bags." It was shown that for months before tho "sport" opened, some intending gunmen fed the ducks with grain, bo that they'd be friendly on the great day of slaughter. Now, mother and the children are absolutely out of this sport— |Cx<?Qpt that mum, of course, plucks the birds and eviscerates the same. There is no reason why mum and the bairns should 3iot rear the game birds in captivity, feeding them daily. Mum could easily be taught to shoot 'cm sitting in the fowlyard, and this extension of' men's privileges might boom the wire netting trade. Why should little Bill, aged five, bo prevented from slaughtering a fence full of ducks until he is old enough for a gun license? Couldn't he wade into the tamed wild-duck yard and screw a few necks for practice? One often gasps at the enormous destructive lorce of a percentage of New Zealand's tiny handful of a million and a half. If the objective of this tiny handful of people is tho destruction of the bush, the murder of its native wild tilings and the wiping out of imported game, what would a reasonable population, say, ten millions of similar people, do to the country in ten years? The Sahara Desert would be an oasis to it.