RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 301, 15 September 1933, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(Bj

Kickshaws.)

An engineer declares that the space above railways should be used for arterial roads. This project is very much in the air. • • • Public school boys who marched 140 miles through Lapland carried rucksacks which weighed 461 b. at the start. It’s what they weigh at the finish that matters. • * • According to a medical expert, the disappearance of the eyebrows was formerly accepted as an important symptom of gland deficiency. Now it is accepted as an important symptom of a self-sufficiency. • • • "As a constant reader of your very interesting column, may I ask you a question? Could you tell me after wnom Arthur’s Pass was named?” says “Admirer,” Wellington. [When a road was projected in the early days from Canterbury to Westland Sir Arthur Dobson’s father, provincial surveyor, suggested that it should go by the way of the pass just discovered by his son Arthur. Although never officially given this name, it stuck until it became the accepted one.—Kickshaws.) ■ ■ • The, beetle curio belonging to a Gisborne resident that produced six little beetles after having been wrapped away in cotton wool for 12 years is one more instance of the extraordinary persistence of life encountered In Nature sometimes. Indeed, this indomitable beetle is on a par with the snail that crawled off its card in the British Museum after having remained glued there for several years. Tests reveal that there is even an insect that Is capable of living for a week in almost a complete vacuum. There are fish in Australia which live I buried in mud when the water recedes for half the year. Toads have often been found alive in hollo'ws in limestone whence they could net possibly have ever escaped. How they got there is just as great a mystery as how they contrived to live on nothing. But one might well. add that butterflies, it has been proved, actually 11 v 6 longer with no heads at all. A scientist who conducted certain experiments in tips respect found that the soothing effect of decapitation enabled these butterflies to live placidly and contentedly a whole week longer than the ones with heads and worries.

(While on the subject of the extraordinary persistence of life that one comes across in Nature, there are few examples to equal the marvellous recuperating powers of certain types of microbes. Experiment has shown that the bacillus that produces typhoid fever may easily survive a thorough boiling. Instead of curling up and dying, these tiny slithers of pulp wrap themselves up in a heat-proof cloak and wait for the heat wave to pass. In contrast to this resistance to high temperatures it has been shown that one may freeze many low forms of life without harming them. In fact, frost kills very few microbes. Moreover, it has been proved that fish frozen solid in ice and kept in that state for a week actually come to life, again >f thawed out One might add in this respect that there are special types of life designed not only to live in very cold places, but also in very hot The microbes responsible for the heating up of haystacks and their ultimate destruction due to internal combustion cannot thrive at temperatures much below that qf boiling water.

If Mrs. McCombs is the first woman to take her seat in the New Zealand Parliament, this Dominion can at least claim an unusually progressive (spirit in the granting of this right. As long ago as the year 1891 a bill was passed by the House of Representatives permitting women to vote at Parliamentary elections. This bill was rejected by the Legislative Council, who, for some reason, do not appear to have been imbued frith the progressive instincts of the Lower House. Nevertheless, two years later New Zealand placed an Act on the statute book giving women the Franchise. It was not until 1919, however, that women were given the right to sit In Parliament, and fourteen years have elapsed since then. Can it be that New Zealand women are more apathetic to political matters than their sisters ‘ elsewhere? The fact remains that countries which passed Franchise Bills years later than New Zealand had women sitting regularly in their Parliaments years earlier.

So progressive did the United States become in the matter of women in politics that, apart from electing members to Congress, President Roosevelt has taken a woman into his Cabinet England, of course, despite the original intense hostility shown women in the matter of Parliamentary matters, has actually survived a female Cabinet Minister. To-day there is a little band of women in the English Commons numbering over a dozen who are returned more or less regularly. In contrast to New Zealand, which has for its first female parliamentary representative a member of the Labour Party, England at the last election turned out all the women Labour members. As a matter of fact England only just escaped holding the record in the matter of women’s political rights when the famous Reform Bill of 1832 was under discussion. But for the fact that some fussy individual caused the word “person” in this Bill to be changed to "male,” England would have given a long lead in this matter. » • • “Could you supply mo with details concerning the S.S. Kaikorai?” says “G.D.” “In the years 1923-24 this ship was manned by a crew which figured rather prominently in your columns. If this is the case, would you kindly give details?” [Nothing sensational can be found. An able seaman deserted at Timaru on September 1,1924, and the case was tried at Lyttelton on September B.— Kickshaws.] « « • “Can any Of your readers give me information regarding an artist Regnier? An oil painting of a fisherman smoking a pipe has come into my possession, but I am unable to discover or hear anything of the artist,” says “E.J.F.,” Palmerston North. • • • We, ignorant of ourselves. Beg often our own harms, which th# wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers. —Shakespeare.