WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 170, 6 April 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM* (By T. D. H.) Aberdeen might take more kindly to German fish if it had not seen so much of German tin fish. British Labour' members must not dine with their political opponents, but they are free to pick a bone with them at any time.

Perhaps after alj it is a humane action for the Soviet to terminate anyone’s existence in Bolshevist Russia.

The titles of British peers have been freely planted on the map as New Zealand place names, and the passing of Lord Carnarvon recalls that our township of Carnarvon, at the mouth of the Rangitikei River, was named after his father, who -was Secretary of State for tho Colonies in the .’seventies. That Lord Carnarvon tried, his* hand at South Africa but did not succeed. A grandson of tho first Lord Carnarvon was the late Sir Robert Herbert, who was Queensland’s first Premier, and after holding the reins in Brisbane for seven years, from 1859. went back to- London to become Permanent Under-Secretary for the Colonies, for twenty years, from 1871 to 1892. On resigning that post he was appointed Agent-General for Tasmania for three years, and finally died in 190-5, a bachelor'of 74. The now deceased Earl of Carnarvon is tho fifth of the line, and apart from his treasure-hunting in Egypt was. interested chiefly in yachting and racing.

The township of Carnarvon is ‘one of tho places in New Zealand that has its future still ahead of it, so to speak. There is' not quite so much of it as there was when it was laid out, as ono Wellington investor in Carnarvon town lots discovered years back. Ho remembered ono day that he had held landed estate in Carnarvon for a long time. and decided to go up and do something with the property. Reaching Carnarvon he produced.a plan and inquired of a veteran inhabitant where sections number so-and-so were. “That’s where those sections are,” said the Carnarvonite, waving his hand vaguely out to the open. “And where's that?” / a , sked the other. “Out there, under the ocean. River cut ’em out years ago.” said* the other; and the landowner’s vision of selling his block to the borough for a. town hall faded out, killed by cold water.

ft is fourteen years ago to-day since Peary reached, uhe North Pole, and. strangely enough, news comes to-day of the arrest of that half-forgotten romancer, Dr. Frederick Albert Cook, who claimed to have reached the Pole on April 21. 1008, almost a year before Peary. The real dry district in America is stated to be where Dr. Cook’s o : l companies have their holdings, and his operations have been a matter of comment for some time past. The doctor had quite a respectable career as a medical man .and. a polar expedition surgeon and writer, until he led an exped.tion of his own to Alaska, in 1902. and claimed to have readied the summit of Mount McKinley. This claim was proved to be a fairy tale, and although Dr. Cook got a dinner out of 'the King of Denmark in 19v9 bv asserting that ho had been to the North Pole, the scientific people remembered’ Alaska, and rather frigidly Susked for the evidence. . Some diaries were produced, but nothing could hold water, and later on two of Dr. Cook s companions confessed that his astronomical observations were faked. After bcinc demolished scientifically, Mr. Cook wrote a series of magazine articles to show that although not strong on figures he was an open, honest o-entleman, who, in his journey into the Arctic, had had “an inner conviction of progress,” and saw no reason why he should not write up a set of- figures to corroborate that. Anyway = he savs he did - measure his shadow with his ice axe several times a dav, and as the shadow was about the same length all day he guessed tfie Pole must be there, or thereabouts. Now the people who buy oil s hare 3 seem to be as fussy about details as the scientists.

Tli at a stoat entered a house at Rotorua and attacked a baby is not credited by ‘-‘C.P.,” who has had to do with stoats for forty years and has never known one enter a bouse, so much do they object to human scent Mv correspondent thmics that tne Rotorua stoat may have been a domestic-bred ferret creeping into a. cradle for warmth, and adds:— One or two of those I turned out forty years ago tried to creep into my men’s blankets for wannt-li and I used, to be' r tfie men not to kill them. Ut the hundreds and thousands we turned out in Wairarapa very few are left, so they do not ■go about Hi large numbers at all, or attack lambs, or do any other of the foolish things for which they are maligned.”

“Stoats,” continues C.P., man’s best friends in New Zealand, and enable us to export more meat than all Australia and almost three times as much butter _ and cll ® es ®- Without thorn the Dominion would bo over-run with rabbits At Tamworih (New South Wales) last year I knew ef a man whose face a rat savagely attacked at night in his sleep; and many mothers there have awake at .night to protect then habiea from the mice gnawing their finders and hair. I saw 900 mice caught in one night at Wallangra. Rats and mice go about in large numbers in Now South Wales, but stoats and weasels do not. These little animate are quite fearless, but do not see well in the day time. . I have met one in the open, but it would not yield tho narrow track to me, as it really didn’t see me, only sniffed and scented me. Rats do a hundred times more hiarni to our poultry, stores, grain, and houses m New Zealand than the valuable natural enemies of the rabbit—whose natural enemies are acclimatisation societies and rabbittrappers. A stoat or a weasel may visit a poultry-yard, but I have patented a trap for catching it without iniurv, and have friends who are prepared to give £2 a head for each one caught.”

Another natural history notei :—Rats are certainly cunning. ;They have destroyed all the cony for a rat poison that was to be advertised in this, paper.—From the “Paola Republican of Kansas.

Tho mail brings a story of a prohibitionist in England who happened to notice a man entering a public, house for his midday glass of beer. “Do you realise,” exclaimed the pro-, hibitionist, "that when ybu enter that dear vou are gou'S ,’nto He*” "Never mind, guv’nor, replied the man good-naturodlv, “they’ll turn me out at three o’clock!”

From a Chinese poet, one Shu Shi, who lived in the eleventh century, comes this gem of cynicism.

ON THE BIRTH OF A SON. Families when a child is born Hope it will turn out intelligent. I. through intelligence Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope that the baby wll ‘ P rove Ignorant and stupid. Ttien ho’ll be happy all his days And grow into a Cabinet Ministers