RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 30, 29 October 1932, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

A naturalist has just discovered that rabbits have a language of their own. Their favourite words are, “Sorry, partner.”

A doctor says that he gargles with cold water night and morning as a precaution against sore throat. He runs a terrible risk of swallowing the stuff.

According to a visiting conductor opera in Italy is like Rugby football in New Zealand. Are they also riven by controversy regarding the replacement of players.

News that Canterbury has just had five days of steady rain without a pause while it is comparatively fine elsewhere, just show’s how unevenly tli ■ water problem is solved by Nature. In this Dominion we’grin and bear these dispensations from above. But in Australia they take their weather more seriously. In one district the inhabitants were suffering from disastrous rain and flood. In another nearby district there was an equally disastrous drought It was decided in the latter district to pray for rain. This was done in all the churches. Wli-’ii the people in the flooded district heard of this they thought It was too much of a good thing. The following telegram was therefore despatched. “We have taken counsel’s advice, and unless you stop praying for rain immediately, he advises us to take steps to recover all damage that has been done in this district.”

The only comfort that can be offered the farmers of Canterbury after their recent bout of five days’ incessant rain is that it might be wetter. The world's wettest day, for example, was spent some years ago at Bagino in the Philippines when forty-six inches of rain fell in one day. Moreover, this was no more than a temporary increase in the downfall which had been going on steadily for a week on end with every sign of continuing for at least another fortnight. One hates to deny residents on the West Coast of any laurels in the matter of wet weather, but even they do not live in a really wet place. The few yards of rain that fall in that area are nothing to the 1000 inches or so that have fallen in a year in some parts of Assam. One place in that district thinks nothing of 900 inches of rain a year. Is there any place in New Zealand that can boast a fall of even 300 inches in any year?

The discovery that a person who makes off with another person’s ear cannot be convicted of stealing unless It be proved that there was an intent to steal, is but another instance of the numerous anomalies that are connected with the law on stealing. Admittedly, a thief of long ago who sued his partner for stealing certain goods stolen by them both in the first place failed to persuade the judge of the iniquity of the crime. But a man who had things stolen from him at Gad’s Hill, near London, by highway robbers succeeded at law in making everyone of the district contribute to him the cost of the losses. As a matter of fact few of us realise that it is possible to steal one’s own property. Some years ago a plaintiff sued a carrying company for the value of a box left in their custody. Subsequently the box was found at the plaintiff’s house. He was arrested on a charge of theft; found guilty, and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.

Possibly the most bewildering features of the complicated laws on stealing are connected with that common crime of stealing by finding. “Findings” in the eyes of children may be “keepings,” but not in the eyes of the law. Unless the owner of an article deliberately abandons it, the article does not cease to be his because it happens to be lost. If the owner of a watch, on the other hand, found it had stopped and in a fit of petulance said, “I hate the beastly thing—l don’t want it,” and threw it away, he would have been considered to have abandoned his watch. Anyone finding it would be entitled to keep it. Needless to say such a thing rarely happens, and is by no means easy to prove. As a matter of fact the law on finding is further complicated by the place and circumstances Where the thing is found For example most articles found on the foreshore are “treasure trove” and normally belong to the King. It should be realised that mere finding imposes no obligation upon the finder. The laws of England do not compel you to do anything with the object found. You may leave it where you find it.

The recent statement to the effect that a spider spins a web eight times as strong as steel wire is calculated to make one wonder why spiders have never been harnessed to the service of man like silk worms. Except for the fine cross lines used in astronomical telescopes and range finders, the spider’s web seems to have been sadly neglected commercially. Excellent as this material ought to be for spinning into material there are one or two difficulties that make the job expensive. In the first place some cheap process must be found for taking the stickiness out of the webs. That done cheap methods of spinning the fine webs into something more solid would have to be discovered. Indeed the exceeding fineness of a spider’s web prohibits man from making much use from it. So tine is the stuff that spiders spin it would require 700,000 spiders to produce web weighing one pound. As a spider has been known to produce a thread 30,000 yards long, budding mathematicians may care to calculate the total length in a pound of web.

In addition to making comparative tests on the strength of spiders’ webs experts have whiled away many a speculative hour calculating just how strong an insect would be if enlarged to the size of man. The result makes one feel grateful that Nature has never experimented with outsizes in insects. If she did man would live a hectic hunted life. A mosquito the size of a cat could drain most of the blood from a man at one sip: A flea the size of a rat would rout humanity. In fact if our jaws were proportionately as strong as the jaws of an ant we would be able to lift 275 tons with our teeth. Tests prove that even the weaker types of ants think little of lifting 3000 times their own weight. If man were proportionately as strong as an ant be could walk off with a couple of large locomotives on his back In the same way tests reveal that a flea can leap sixty times its own height. At that rate a man ought very nearly to be able to hop over Mt. Victoria.