Hoarding Is Part Of Human Nature

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29278, 9 August 1960, Page 2

Hoarding Is Part Of Human Nature

Human beings have a close affinity to squirrels. Everyone, consciously or unconsciously, hoards something. The most assiduous “thrower-out” may discover one day in a cupboard a pile of newspapers many years old, or a collection of bus tickets in the bottom of her, purse. Others, of course, make a hobby of collecting odds and ends from a very early age.

The smallest child usually has a collection of favourite stones, or pieces of string. As they grow girls graduate to scrap book pictures of film stars, or pictures of royalty, stamps, or shells. Miniature animal ornaments are a popular item, and make a collecting hobby which often lasts throughout a lifetime. Dr. Minnie Perlstein, an eminent American skin specialist, who visited Christchurch recently, collected miniature cows of all shapes and sizes. Another Christchurch woman has a fine collection of miniature camels. When the years of discretion are reached, oddly shaped bottles make their appearance on the mantelpiece, often with drops of candle-grease. Many women will admit to a secret pile of letters received when they were in their early twenties, or to a collection of theatre programmes dating from the same period. A Christchurch woman began her collection of race tickets round a finely shaped bottle. The brightly-coloured tickets hung from the neck. Now they are too many, so they hang on a separate hook. Labels Women who continue collecting after they have reached 30 have the habit for life. By then their hobby may have acquired the dignity of a label, and sometimes membership of a society, such as the Philatelic Society. Birds-egg-seekers become zoologists, and shell-gatherers will call themselves conchologists. Many who made collecting their life’s work—numismatists (of coins) and depidopterologists (of butterflies and moths) and numerous other “ists” or “ologists”— began life as humble collectors of common objects. Travellers are the most inveterate collectors. There is something about a foreign place that produces an irresistible desire to collect souvenirs. Home ctme the hotel and airline labels, the restaurant menus and paper napkins, the swizzle-sticks from

cocktails in Bangkok or Berlin. Some bring back jewellery, others carved ornaments. One Christchurch woman has a collection of spoons from throughout the world. A Dutch spoon has a quaint porcelain clog fastened to the handle. Another spoon, from Mt. Cook, has the pattern of an alpine flower on the handle and a picture of the mountain in the bowl.

A recent visitor to New Zealand from Canada had collected buttons throughout the world, and had many rare and antique buttons in her collection. Large or small, unusual or ordinary, in every house the collections mount up. As spring approaches, women will be thinking of spring cleaning. But it is very doubtful whether any of these precious trophies will be thrown out.