WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 58, 3 December 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

In reasserting p_ claim to temporal sovereignty, His Holiness the Pope seems to be a good deal bolder than the Italian Parliament. Treason is possible under a League of Nations mandate —but not to the League of Nations. Tlie world seems to be growing older at a rapid pace. It is only in fairly recent years that Bishop Usher’s date off 4004 B.C. for the Creation was removed from the margin of the Authorised Version of the Bible, and now we have Professor David declarihg that life has existed on the earth for at least five thousand million years. A few years back the scientists were much more moderate in their figures than this for on calculations based on the sun’s estimated loss of heat the earth’s age was worked* out at something between 13 and 100 million years. Since then other sources of heat have been discovered, and in 1921 Professor H. N. Russell in a paper before the Royal Society put the earth’s age at between 2000 million and 8000. million years, j. while Professor Gregory in the new volumes of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” says that “geologists and oosmogonists now assume practically as great nn age for the earth as they find convenient.” —It is a bold man who would, prophesy how old the earth will be in scientific circles fifty years hence.

'The new “Encyclopaedia” also tells us that there is no insuperable' difficulty in the way of making a carbonaoeous jelly with the properties of living matter out of inorganic materials. From this one infers that the modem chemist could mix up a jelly that on tho evolutionary basis might develop into an improved variety of human being in the course of five billion years or so—with somte of Professor Voronoff’s glands the chemists will doubtless have carried the experiment right through. The present idea about our human family tree is that the Australian black is the bluest-blooded direct descendant of the old original family stock, and next to hint the negro. Our early ancestors, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, had black skins under their hair, and the earlier human retained the black skin, but got gradually paler as he went along, bleaching out through browns and yellows, and working possibly towards the albino as the final climax —although the scientists for some odd reason seem to be much vaguer about what will bo going on five thousand million years hence than they are about what was happening five thousand, million years back.

After keeping company for a while with learned folk who do not condescend to deal in anything less than a billion of years it seems like coming back to the day before yesterday to consider the case of 'Tutankhamen, now in the news again. The evidence that the Egyptian flapper bobbed her hair and painted her face is overwhelming, and altogether it appears that the earth has not been what it ought to bb for a considerable time past — though, of course, it has to be remembered that Tutankhamen’s days were before the Ten Commandments, so they probably did not know any better then. Major Fitzurse tells me he has often reflected on what life must have been like in those days. Tho ancients had a tradition of the Golden Age, which the Major has been trying to place in the light of recent research, and he feels it must liave been about that period before the complexities of modern life came in. The present era, the Major ihels, will be known in fiture aeons as the Paper Aga. It is already on historical record, of course, that it originated from a single Scrap .of I’aper, just as presumably all [iving organisms originated from the original caihonaceous jelly.

When the Hon. Nathaniel Rothschild, partner in the famous Rothschild banking house, committed suicide a few weeks back, the world lost its foremost authority on fleas. Mr. Rothschild besides being an active business man was a very keen entomologist, and in fact succeeded Commander Walker as president of the London Entomological Society. Before Mr. Rothschild took an interest in them fleas were just fleas. Every variety of mammal and bird almost has its own special flea, but no previous naturalist had studied them closely. It is not an easy task, as when the bird or animal is dead the fleas at once hop off, and one needs the living subject for successful flea hunting. Mr. Rothschild’s taste for fleas—he went to no end of labour and expense to collect every sort of flea tho most painstaking flea-hunter could find or money buy—was thought to be an odd ■ taste in natural history for a millionaire. Later on when it was found that rat fleas carried plague his collection became immensely valuable, and is now in the British Museum, and he himself had the plague flea drawn and photographed and his picture distributed broadcast over the world.

We were told on Friday that Mr. Rothschild had left instructions in his will that several of his books marked “Entomological Localities’ were to be destroyed unopened. The reason for this request was. supposed to be to prevent dealers in natural history specimens from exterminating certain very rare insects, existing possibly only in a single field. There are numbers of insects in Britain found at one spot only. One butterfly, the Lulworth Skipper, is found only at Lulworth Cove, Dorsetshire, while another is known only on tho landslip> at Shanklin in the Isle of M ight. Whether New Zealand has rare insects inhabiting only some particular half acre remains to be seen. Discussing this point, Mr. G. • Hudson remarked that while, some New Zealand insects had so tar been found only at one spot the country as a whole had not been explored thoroughly enough from a naturalist s point of view to say whether these Insects existed elsewhere. The probability was that the rarest New Zealand insects have not -been discovered yet. It is not suggested, of course, that the late Mr. Nathaniel , Rothschild s “Entomological Localities was a list of the addresses of the families in Britain, who are known to carry fleas. The new curate—possibly the original one who preached the sermon ’about “Rabbabas being a robber, -made another awkward mix-up of his consonants at the village dance 1 asking a couple ensconced in a pleasant corner he observed: Youve got a nosv cook in there.” The worst of it was that it was a cook, a good plain one from the lectorv. SCRUB. If I grow bitterly, lake a gnarled and stunted tree, Bearing harshly of my youth Puckered fruit that sears the mouthy if I make of my drawn boughs An inhospitable house, Out of which I never pry Towards the water and the sky, Under which I stand and mde And hear the day go by outside, It is that a wind too strong Bent my back when I was young, It is that I fear the rain Lest it blister me again. —Edna St. Vincent Millay.: