SEEING LONDON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 94, 20 April 1940, Page 12

SEEING LONDON.

Americans Like Good Scottish Colours

(By JOAX LITTLE FIELD.) During the war. British clothes will be exported more Than ever to America. They will be noteworthy for good | design, good workmanship and excellent material?. Because Americans like our good Scottish "co-related colours,'' in which materials for coat, suit, dress and blouse arc designed in unison, their buyers are demanding more British colours. The Colour Council has now prepared a dossier of Scottish natural colours. A fine rich red conies from torjmentil; a Tyrian rose from rue root, a bright scarlet from ripe privet berries, crimson from crottle, Maine from ragwort. magenta from dandelion, green from whin bark and heather, brown from blaeberry, yellow from hog myrtle, and the true -.Stuart blue from another blaeberry mixture. Norfolk inshore fishermen, hard hit ; by the war, are making fishnet scarves for women in their spare time. They can be u<sed also as turbans, sashes and evening shawls. The scarves are made with long needles in the same way as ordinary fishnet, but coloured wool or silk is used instead of fishnet cotton. The secret, apparently, is to know how to make a knot quickly with your needle. If the knots are not pulled tight, the nets are liable to fall to pieces. A large-sized scarf can be made in lees than two hours, and is sold at just over a dollar; more than its maker can earn from inshore fishing these days. The men may soon be making fishnet curtains and bedspreads. Woman Fights Profiteers. A woman who plays an important part behind the scenes in wartime Britain is Margaret D. Shufeldt, secretary to the Central Price Regulation Committee. This organisation has been set up to guard the consumer against war profiteering, and it is Miss Shufeldt's job to assemble complaints of profiteering forwarded by 17 local committees. She collates masses of information about goods, and when she hM sifted information from all over the country, her report goes to the Central Committee.

Mis* Shufeldt, who i*> an expert linguist as well a* a statistician, was at Oxford University, from which she went to her first important post in J921 —with the Reparations Commission in Paris. For five years she was secretary of the finance section. In 1»31 she went over to the sugar council, in which nine countries were concerned.

Kipling did much to tell the world of the beauties of Sussex. Xow the world is to have a chance of seeing the beautiful surroundings in which the author worked and which he loved so dearly. Hia wife has left Bateman's his 300-year-old home, at Burwash, to the National Trust, together with many acres of its estate, and it will be open to the public on Saturday and Sunday afternoons throughout "the year.

The trust is looking for a tenant for the manor house, preferably somebody with literary or scholarly interests, who, at a nominal rent, will see to its upkeep. The house is a three-storey building of about twenty rooms, and there are about two acres of garden. Also ou the estate are 200 acres used for mixed farming, with farm buildings and cottages, and these will also be let. Whoever takes the manor hoi_e will have to be approved by Lord Baldwin, according to Mrs. Kipling's will, and must be prepared to keep Kipling's study on the first floor exactly as it was in his lifetime. Certain rooms on thc ground floor must also be open to the public on Saturdays aud Sundays. Bateman's should be a new place of literary pilgrimage. Thc house and its surroundings are described in "Puck of Pook'a Hill," and the district gave Kipling material which permeates many of hia other writings. He did much planning and planting on his 300-acre estate and thus left his mark on a neighbourhood which had given him so much. Hospital for Seagulls. At Mousehole, On the Cornish coast, a 65-yearsold woman and her two daughters run a hospital for seagulls suffering from pollution by oil. Every time a U-boat is sunk large patches of oil appear on the sea, which clog the wings of any birds alighting on its surface. Thousands of them— including gulls, guillemots, razorbills, gannets and terns —break their legs or wings each year trying to free themselves from oil coating, and were it not for Mrs. YglesiaS and her hospital hundreds would have to be destroyed each week. Since *he war casualties have increased. As many as 710 birds hare been picked up by five people in one morning on the Cornish coast. Now fishermen and voluntary patrol workers take the birds to Mrs. Yglesias. She and her daughters work in a cluster of wooden outhouses. The birds arc first washed. Then they are given a "bran bath" to dry but . their wings. Then they convalesce in an aviary. ;After their releafee they often return to the garden on a visit.