WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 119, 5 February 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

America thinks Turkey does not need to rattle the sword so long as she can rattle the Allies.

It looks as if marine insurance rates will be going vessels visiting Auckland harbour.

Greece is thirsting for another war. —Yes. hut what about her Cabinet Ministers when she loses it?

Dr. Alexander Scott, whose researches into the composition of New Zealand iroiisand have resulted in the discovery of the new clement which is exciting so much interest among the scientists, is one of the most distinguished chemists in Britain. lie in one of the conquering race which has invaded Britain from north of the Tweed, for he was born seventy years ago at Selkirk, the little town in the Scott Country near the famous “Braes of Yarrow,” where his father was rector of the Grammar School. On, going to Edinburgh University young Scott coverol himself with glory as senior medallist in the chemistry class, and later distinguished himself at Cambridge. so that by 1915 he had become president of tho British Chemical Society, an® to-day is Director cf Scientific Research at the British Museum. Even in his leisure lie cannot leayo chemicals alone, for his chief hobby is photography.

New Zealand has hundreds of miles of black sand beaches, and it will be exciting to know from how much of the. black sand wo can expect to get hafnium, or oberonium, or whatever tho new element is called. As it took Dr. Scott ten years to find it, I suppose it is no use taking a magnifying glass up to New Plymouth beach to look into things and see if there is anything in all the talk. According to a recent geological report the Patea Harbour Board has five million tons of ironsand. which it gave some one a six months’ option over a while ago. Of the huera deposits of ironsand on the New Plymouth beaches .and the attempts to do something with them whole books could be written. At Mercury Bay on the Cape Colville Peninsula there is black sand that contains gold with it, unlike the Taranaki sands, which do not. The great deposit of gold-bearing ironsand beaches, however, is on the West Coast of the South Island where they run right from Cape Farewell to Preservation In'et with scattered bits round to the Molyneux River in Otago. On the West Coast the ironsand was more of a bugbear to the miners than anything else, for their only thought was to find an easy way separating the gains of gold in it from the iron. It was in 1864 that Alphonso Barrington, Antonio Laurie, and_ James Farrell went overland from Wakatipu to Jaokson’s Bay looking for a quartz reef (which' they did not find), and incidentally washing the gold from black sand for the first time on record. Even a worm will turn. —-A motorcar derailed a train in Illinois, U.S.A.

Mr. Will. B. McKenzie writes:— “The announcement in Saturday s Dominion, headed ‘A Record Flight, is deserving of passing notice. There were many who may have guessed from the heading that an aeroplane was concerned, but it was simply three little pigeons, weighing not more than, say, 12’ ounces each,' which have achieved the long journov of 820 miles in 29 hours. And it. must be borne in nund that our racing pigeons do not fly in tho dark, so that an allowance must be made for tho hours of New Zealand has always bon upon (bv reason of its physical land features,’and from-the amount of crosssea travel involved) as a very difficult country to race pigeons m. tn America and in South Africa, where physical and climatic conditions are verv different, distances of well oxer 1000 miles are constantly in o-ood time. And even m England there is on record a fly from Rom ■ well over 1000 miles awjvy. and across had country too. But in the English case, tho time does not compare at all with tills latest New- Zealand fly-

“T+ mav be mentioned,” adds Air. McKenzie, “that the United States Armv authorities (racing pmeon section) are now trying to train the.r birds to flv in the dark, and they are meeting with some success too. Ihe racing of pigeons (though its modern revival date” back little more than a- ceuturv) was flourishing in Egvpt as long ago as th« time of building the Pyramids, long prior for instance, to the time no arc hetirng so much of i ust . UU/J.’X time lof Tutankhamen. • And these game little birds h 4 vo -been used on and off right, down -he ages. lOx in stance, at Modena (it was not named Modena, then, and I ancient name), when this Italian was beshged. seme time in 8.U., ph™„r- were used to carry merges cut nnd during the Crusades. and of course, during the «ege of Fans they were similarly used. And then .h--oldest hisioriaal record we have, tie “homing of Noah’s pigeon to the Ark!”

Scientists say we can prolong life b? eatin" cabbage.—The ancient Greeks musYhave known this when they said that those whom the gods lined die young*

There was not much hii’po ur , 111 late FieldAfarsh.nl Lord Moiseiev. Tn one of his recenlly-pnhhshed letters to Ladv ATolselcv he tells bon he. baa the late W. T. Stead, the famous ]ourto breakfast, and found him so interesting as to keep him to lun choon. Lord Wolseley confessed to bis wife that ho found a fnsemation n sitting and gazing . at Stead as he 'talked. All the time, ho says, 1 looked at him. thinking if it should ever be m_v lot to have io hang or shoot him."

Such lugubrious r'-.vnmlruT.* <io not seem to have troubled Lady Wolseley, who s’ved up little til-bits for her solemn husband to chuckle over. She tells this, for instance, of Mrs. Gladstone-.-“ Mrs. Gladstone. I an> told wont tho other day tn see Sir Andrew Clark; the servant who owned the dcv> r su’d she must unit, as engaged with a gentleman She ea d if. was preposterous she should v ait fo- anyone when the health of the Prime Minister was in question, so she pushed post the. footman, opened the dXr’s door, and boldly entered, to find Sir Andrew kneeling beside * man examining him all over. The patient had his shirt rolled up *2 his. fane could not be seen, but he r tained his gaiters on his legs. Gladstone deebred she recognised Bishop of London.” IMPOSSIBILITIES. A little cloi’d climlxd.up the sky, W’th purpose and intent. To hide a sinning silver moon, Before its life was spent. Bn 1 - all serene, ilic moon sliono on, And' soon the little (loud was gone. \ little 1 rouble tried one day To darken a glad heart, To spread itself and grow so big, That all else must depait.. Bin happintv.s was there to stay, And so the trouble crept away. —Alice Wilson Oldroyd, m the “Nei> York , Herald.”