RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 182, 1 May 1931, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

A South African newspaper complains, rather bitterly, that cheeses are often allowed to suffocate. With some really lively specimens, what else can one do to keep them quiet?

Psychologists have declared that sensitive men always have their hands slightly clenched when they are telling lies. The exception that proves this rule is the angler. His hands on these occasions are fully extended.

A reader writes: One of A. S. Paterson’s recent cartoons in “The Dominion” about Mr. Law’s Rhode Island team of hens sounded a chord of sympathy in my heart. At one time I .bought three geese. Someone explained to me that all ganders had curly tails. That was perfectly all right. 1 thus had two ganders, one white, one grey. Christmas came along. I killed the grey gander and we ate him for dinner. After that I patiently waited three months for eggs. At the end of that time I asked a poultry man the reason for the unproductivity of my goose. “What colour is it?” he asked. “White," I replied. “That explains it,” he said. “All geese are grey I”

In his opening speech at the autumn show of the Karori Horticultural Society, Sir Alexander Roberts said he thought modern chrysanthemums, as exhibited, for show purposes, were a waste pf time. He went on to refer to dahlias, but complained that they disliked holding up their heads. That then is what progress has done to the chrysanthemum and the dahlia. No wonder the poor little dahlia refuses to hold up its highly civilised, hybridised, doubled, trebled little head. It is no more like the original dahlia than a daisy. When the dahlia was first found by Europeans in Mexico nearly 150 years ago, it was holding up its head beautifully. For' there was nothing about which to feel ashamed. The chrysanthemum is worse. This plant has been known to man for 2000 years. He has done everything to it that could be done to “improve” it. Indeed it is the national flower of China. The Chinese have even named a war after it. A war, incidentally, that lasted 56 years.

Whenever a horticulturist gets hold of some plant he immediately “improves/ it. If it has a single flower he produces a double. If It is red he turns it black with red blotches; if it is short be makes it long. If it is big he dwarfs it. As he sets his own standards at all flower shows his nightmares win prizes. But like the dahlia they feel shy at holding up their heads. Perhaps this habit may be seen at its worst with the rose. The Wars of the Roses were foilght round quite a simple rose. To-day a similar war would have to be fought round a “Commander Jules Graveraux,” or some equally longnamed specimen, the bane of every selfrespecting bee. One hundred years ago there were only 2500 varieties of roses known. One would have thought that this was more than enough for the most grasping rose enthusiast. To-day, however, there are over 12,000 varieties What a waste of time!

The fact is that the horticulturist never knows when to stop. For 300 years the Dutch unsuccessfully concentrated on the production of a black tulip. Tulips may be had in so many colours, surely it is cruel to make the wretched plant burst out into a colour it heartily hates. Most black tulips, even to-day, have a tiuge of red or purple in their petals when held to the light-as a token of their remonstrance. In the same manner, just because it is next to Impossible to produ~'> a blue tarnation, hundreds of experts are wasting their time trying to produce one. It does not matter whether blue is a pretty colour for carnations or not. In the same manner plant experts are trying to cajole the sweet pea to turn blue, or, failing that, bright yellow. Blue, indeed, seems to hybridists like a red fag to a bull. If they-could, they would paint blue the whole flower world. We would hare true blue roses, blue chrysanthemums, blue pelagorniums, and even blue dahlias. -Let us have done with this craze. Give us back, you plant fiddlers, the sweet scents of the gardens of long ago—give us back our sweet-scented musk, give us more scent to our simple violets, our primroses, and our roses. I’or out of 4110 "improved” varieties, once exquisitely simple flowers, only 400 have any scent to-day.

Repertory in its true sense, writes “George Bernard Kickshaws,” is a company of professionals or amateurs nho have at their command a repertory of plays which they could, and do, present at brief notice; so that most of the amateur bodies, which work ou precisely the same principle as amateur theatrical societies have always worked in the past, are not in the truest sense repertory companies. On one oecasion the Wellington Dramatic btu dents produced live different plays on live successive nights, and of these performances three at least were Pinero comedies, “The Hobby Horse, lhe Schoolmistress,” and “The Magistrate. Nowadays that would be considered a herculean task, yet it was something attempted, something done, without any particular comment being made on the achievement. In those days, too, the amateurs had a very high standard to look up to. Most of the Pinero comedies, as they appeared, were Produced in New Zealand by the Brough ad Boucicault Company, then one finest repertory or stock companies the world. Indeed, when that company disappeared from the theatrical horizon we ceased to get the good plays with the same meticulous regularity, and notablv “Trelawny of the wells, bolt,” “Mid - Channel, A «ne Without a Smile,” “The Benefit of the Doubt” “Iris” and “The Process and the Butterfly.” The latter play ls sa by eminent critics to be one of the veil best in the Pinero album; so that, with the scalp of “Trelawny” fresh hanging ' from their belts, there is yet much pabulum in Pinero for the attention o the Repertory Theatre.

Haply, the River of Time, As it grows, as the towns on its marge Fling their wavering lights On a wider statelier stream— May acquire, if not the calm Of its early mountainous shore, Yet a solemn peace of its own. —Matthew Arnold.