RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 153, 24 March 1932, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL ( (By Kickshaws.) April 10 is the date fixed for restarting Arapuni. It is understood that the Government was not very keen about April 1. The Petone Esplanade under “roughometer” test gives a record of 408 bumps to the mile. This raises a suspicion that the Borough Council is trying to bump the motorists off. It is comforting to think that it the goose with the golden eggs has stopped laying, the hens are still doing their bit for Easter. *» . » The proposed white lines on tbe Hutt Road will make traffic safer. In suspicious circumstances motorists could also be invited to demonstrate their ability to walk along them. • • * One of the world’s greatest surgeons has been praising the manner in which a Nubian doctor of 1000 B.C. set a fractured forearm. He declares that surgery to-day could have done no better. It does us good to recognise the ability of the past. We are too conceited to-day. We think we do everything better than has ever been done before. Five thousand years ago man suffered and cured disease. He had skilful surgeons to. relieve his troubles. Possibly his surgeons did not’know the why or wherefore of the things he did. But his skill at anyrate still remains as a monument. The surgeons of those days, it has been shown, were no less deterred from carrying out difficult operations than the surgeons of to-day. The difference is a difference of means and implements. The tricky operation of trepanning, far from being a modern idea, was actually practised four it not five thousand years ago. Neat round holes have been discovered in some of these age-old skulls, which are conclusive proof that trepanning was a fairly common operation. In most cases the patient seems to hare survived. Despite the fact that in performing this delicate operation on the skull, the prehistoric surgeon used a stone augur as a drill.

Even to-day no little dexterity is shown in the treatment of wounds by many extremely uncivilised peoples. The Indians of Brazil, for example, use an ant with very powerful jaws to bite together the. edges of a bad cut. When this is done they cut off the animal’s head, which remains in position. Another way of doing this operation is to insert long thorns through tbe edges of the cut. A piece of string is then twisted in a figure of eight fashion round the protruding ends of the thorn. The first-mentioned method is curiously similar to our habit of inserting stitches. The latter method is almost identical with the operation performed for closing clefts in the lip. The difference is that we use special steel pins instead of thorns. Among other tribes it is the custom for the wife of a hunter who returns home with gaping wounds to take a hair from her bead and sew the wound together with a needle. It is only among men that operations are performed, however. Some ofi the lower animals show extraordinary ingenuity in curing their wounds. Birds particularly seem to have an extraordinary knack of recovering from broken limbs, or even wings, if left to themselves. In the same way cattle left to themselves have been known to recover almost completely from broken legs. So completely, indeed, it is sometimes difficult to believe that the leg was ever, broken.

The coming to Wellington of the Water Lily with her crew of young adventurers reminds me of trips made by that sturdy old craft from Stewart Island to the mainland, 1 writes '‘Southlander.” For some years she was in the timber trade and, time and again, she crossed Foveaux Strait with hold and decks so packed that only a foot or two of freeboard remained above water. There are times when Foveaux Strait is a chaotic, howling waste, and the Water Lily has made many a wild passage. On one salubrious occasion, however, I journeyed in the little vessel, heavily laden, on a smooth, oily sea. An hour or two out from Stewart Island two whales appeared and acted as escorts. Sitting on a pile of deck timber a sawmillers’ union secretary and I watched the big mammals, in sportive mood, playing a sort of marine follow-my-leader, hardly more than an oar's length from the gunnel of tbe Water Lily, First one and then the other would break the surface, the giant back sliding swiftly forward, and the great tail lifting clear before plunging. ’As a study in natural-his-tory it was a trifle too intimate to lie. entirely enjoyable, but the Water Lily nosed steadily on like the veteran warrior she was, and finally we were deposited safely ashore.

One would have imagined that after her countless trips -from Stewart Island to the New River Estuary the Water Lily could have made her way up and down from Invercargill “on her own,” but the young men who form her present crew found to their dismay that this was not the case. Beginning their present voyage they set off from Invercargill at midnight of December 24 to spent Christmas at Stewart Island. The night was dark, and the estuary channel twists about in bewildering fashion. Well-wishers watched the Water Lily disappear in the gloom, then went home. Next morning early church-goers observed a vessel high anti dry on a sea of soft mud a mile or so from the wharf. It was the Water Lily, and its crew were sadly cooking its breakfast on a tilted stove apd waiting for the tide to come in. The adventurers spent Christmas on the mudbank. If it be true that ships have souls, the Water Lily must have smiled deep down in its old self.

But when our plough rounds crossed. He only fussed about the time I’d lost. Then bustled up his team And said "Now sonny, don't stand there and dream. Witli all this work to do.” But I work better when I drcam—don’t you? —K.A.G.