RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 55, 28 November 1929, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS

LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Cosmos.)

It’s a mistake to make light of China’s revolution. Any proof-reader can testify to its atrocities. America plans to start classes in crime-prevention, but the difficulty will be to get the people who really need it to enrol. As the Rose Show in the Town Hall indicated yesterday, the number of new roses and other plants seems to be unending. Experts have now learnt to produce new plant products with the adroitness of an artist painting a new picture or the inspired cleverness of a sculptor giving to the world some exquisite perfection of his art. Burbank, the man who took the thorns out of the cactus and gave the world a plum that revolutionised the plum shipping industry, and produced diseaseresisting potatoes, laconically explained modern methods in a short sentence: “The plant breeder,” he said, “before making combinations has to use the greatest care, based on a wide experience, to select individual plants which seem best adapted to his purpose.”

By careful interbreeding and selection we have our new roses, our new pansies, better potatoes; green, orange, pink, and even blue tulips. The general idea sounds delightfully simple. But Burbank omitted to explain the enormous pains and time that must be taken before the new hybrid comes on the scenes. In efforts to cross the blackberry and the raspberry .Burbauk in one year grew 65,000 seedlings. At the end of the year the whole lot were burnt except a bare dozen. The art of producing something better expended on the correct selection of that dozen. Altogether Burbank tested and experimented with something like a million plants. He had 6000 experiments under way simultaneously. By crawling on hands and knees from one plant to another he could tell instinctively just which blackberry seedling to keep, just which ornamental shrub to destroy, the most likely-looking rose for his purpose, until he became the despair of botanists.

The first successful hybrid plant, as a matter of fact, was given to the world in the 18th century long before the days of Burbank or Darwin. A Mr. Fairchild in that century, more by luck than anything else, produced the famous Sweet William named after him. To-day there is scarcely a plant or shrub that hasn’t been altered for better or for worse, until there is even talk of. growing square trees for milling purposes. But the work is not yet done, far from it. “Our duty is to go on study in the school of nature,” Burbank said shortly before he died. “Here and there, now and then, sometimes by intuition, sometimes by intention and sometimes by mere fortune or accident, we will continue to pick up from her treasures valuable varieties that will continue to make the world a better place in which to live.” For instance, recently the radishcabbage has made an appearance, whilst in retaliation the once fragrant musk has lost its famous scent.

Clemenceau has been buried in a lonely briar clump in an out-of-the-way part of France in an upright position in the grave. In spite of his wellknown agnostic theories, it is difficult to discover any particular significance in this except that it is different from accepted custom. Just how and why the various nations of the world bury their dead in the way they do would take a lot of explaining. But the upright position does not seem to have occurred to anybody. At first, of course, man did not bury his dead. The body was left where it lay and the tribe moved on. Burial, however, is very old and can be traced to Neanderthal man, who not only performed this ceremony but actually ate with honour a portion of the deceased. Even before that, over a hundred thousand years ago, important persons were buried, as was discovered not so long ago in a place called Solutre in the South «>f France.

In these cases a cut stone had been placed vertically at the head of the grave. The feet were towards rising ground and the head faced the setting sun. In another case a youth of this period was discovered buried in a sleeping posture. His head rested on a pillow of flints with his right forearm supporting it. Of all the postures for burial the sitting position is by far the most common. It can be traced throughout the world from the Maoris and other Pacific races to the Continent of Europe and Britain. The Bushmen went further and believed that the sun will rise late if the dead are not buried facing the west. The Fijians and Samoans insist on the feet and faces facing this westerly direction, whither the souls are supposed to go. The Indians of America also believe in the head to west position, whilst the Guarrayos and, of course, the early Christians, believed just as stronglv in an easterly aspect. ♦ » ’

The Chinese, in some cases, prefer to be buried head downwards in order to make it easy for them to undertake a non-stop journey to their paradise below without the trouble of turning round. The Chinese, as a matter of fact, have a curiously detached view on burial that to the Western mind seems at times perhaps just, a little tactless. For one thing, coffins are regarded as appropriate presents for ailing relatives, whilst some wealthy Chinese make a habit of taking the’r coffin witli them on their travels, just in ease. In this respect it must not be forgotten that both Sarah Bernhardt and Darwin did very much the same thing. In Darwin’s case lie is reported to have ordered the local catpenter to make his coffin one day when business was slack.

It seems ratliei unreasonable of the American Press to be making a fuss about the item of £8 for “beauty treatment” discovered as one of the incidental expenses incurred by die celebrate! Mrs. Aimee McP-henon during the course of “a revival” which she has been condu.ting at Detroit. Surely nothing can be more reviving, than the recovery (or preservation) of personal beauty/ and “face-lifting” seems to have an almost ethical value, since there can be no form of “uplift” more obvious than the raising of a fallen countenance. Besides, this particulai aspect of revivalist methods ought to subdue some of Mrs. McPherson’s former critics. It proves that she cannot really have been equipped with a face of brass, or these recent works of necessity and grace would never have been required.