PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 116, 18 May 1935, Page 8

PERSONALITY OF THE WEEK.

If you will look at page one of the Magazine Section this afternoon you will see a story "Eos—the Goddess of the Dawn." It has charm. So has the NO. 476. author, who has so nicely told us during the past eight years about our own country, the "Ways of the Wild" and its fauna and flora. Mr. A. T. Pycroft is the new president of the Auckland Institute and Museum—a noble institution with its foundation in our hearts. Mr. Pycroft was born in Auckland in 1875 and went, to school at the Church of England Grammar School and the Auckland Grammar School. Ho joined the Railways Department at the age of fifteen years, combed his native land in his lopg seri vice, and retired n:ne years ago. From boyI hood he has been devoted to the etudy of (Nature —the exuberant and incom parable glories of our lovely land. He has been intensely interested in the study of the birds of the mainland, and our islands. His camera has clicked in" every corner—his gun—no! He has even seen a live huia—thirty-six years ago in the Forty-Mile Bush—no longer there. Mentions, too, that the disappearance of bush and the draining of the swamps, although decimating the bird population, has not affected the tui and the 'bellbird, which are increasing.' Sir Walter Buller, a great authority, was pessimistic, but birds are adaptable. Mr. Pycroft is- president of the Auckland Zoological Society, is a life member of the St. George's Rowing Club, and was for five years on the Tamaki Road Board. It was during this ' period the Tamaki D"ive come into being. Mrs. Pycroft is well known for her charming studies of New Zealand flora and her paintings on china. There is one son. Mr. Pycroft has gre Jtly at heart the junior classes in natural history. is an almost unexplored field in young Nature lovers.

England consumes but twelve million gallons of wine a year, relatively a bee's-wine for ma, a small glass for pa, and a longing sniff Jor the bairns. LonTHE COBWEBBED don lias many miles of BOTTLE. subterranean wine vaults

which Fritz longed for in 1914, et see. The British people have been sipping the juice of the grape since the Conqueror brought a bottle ashore, so ardent prohibitionists have a hard row to hoe. These vinous thoughts are induced by a perilsal of the cabled report of the Vintners' Dinner held in London, in which Royalty freely joined, the brother of the Queen being chairman and the four sons of the King being present. Winebibbing is such an aristocratic pastime that the Vintners, who were going strong in the fourteenth century and before, anticipate a continuance of this pastime so painful to tea drinkers. One infers that the Vintners' Dinner was conducted with the utmost propriety, for the toasts, including that of the Seigneur of the Swans—H.M. the King—were drunk in priceless vintages and proposed in the English of the Middle Ages, by my halidome and lackaday. The perfect order and sobriety of the gathering is vouched for by the language in which the toasts were presented—no threebottle man could do it. This paragraph is written to suggest a variant of that old dictum that "Wine is a mocker. . . . For at the last it biteth like a snake and like an adder." The writer llierely meant that new wine gives the drinker a stomach ache. No new wine was drunk at the Vintners' Dinner. "I often wonder what the vintners buy, one half so precious as the goods they sell.""

Adelaide, the City of Churches, has a halfpage of pictures to-day, and so the fact that the Premier of that gigantic bit of ground, South Australia, is in THE GREASY London is of interest. Mr. POLE. R. Layton Butler, the said j Premier, up to the moment hasn't been very oratorical, although •he has said that he prefers whisky to tea — an amiable expression of opinion. Mr. Butler is a farmer, but he is also the son of the late Sir Richard Butler, who was Premier of the Croweater State, too. When the present Premier was a lad of seven he was lying sweetly asleep when his mother roused him with the glad cry, "Dad is at the top of the poll!" The coming Premier took it to mean that liis father had shinned up some greasy and slippery pole. Recently Mr. Butler, telling the story, said that as far as politics are concerned he was right.

A THOUGHT FOR TO-DAY. Life is not so short but that there is always time for courtesy. —Emerson.