RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 69, 14 December 1933, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

De Valera has declared war on. the Blue Shirts. His feelings on the subject are naturally shirty. • • » News comes from America that President Roosevelt is not yet out of the wood. Judging by all the new posts his scheme requires it is as well to have a wood handy. A jobbing gardener is reported to have been so shaken by a flash of lightning that he was unable to move. It looks rather as if h% just went on being a jobbing gardener. » • ♦ “I recently read that table tennis was popularly but incorrectly called ‘ping pong.’ Can you tell me if this is so. I always had the idea that ‘ping pong 1 was the original and correct name of the game,” writes “W.W.,” Wellington., If there' is any precedent for one or the other of the two terms it must be of only a few months. The “Table Tennis Association” and the “Ping Pong Association” both started between 1900 and 1902. The rules of the game in both associations were practically identical. No encyclopaedias prior to 1900 seem to mention either of the games although' efforts to adapt tennis to the house were made many years before that. —Kickshaws. • * • News that China claims that her fattailed sheep are the oldest domestic animals in the world starts a controversy that will probably never, be settled. Experts are of the opinion that the oldest domestic animal is the fowl. Long before the Ancient Britons heard the early morning challenge of the rooster, primitive man had been experimenting with the breed. Some experts declare that the fowlyard started at least 10,000 years ago. . Next in antiquity comes the horse. The original horses were only the size of a large dog. Man, however, took a hand in the proceedings some 8,000 years ago and in the intervening period the horse has been made what it is today. Even in the 17th century the horse was by no means the. perfect creature it is to-day. Conditions of races run in those days show that the “horses” were what we should nowadays call ponies. It was British breeders who conceived the idea of importing Arab stock. Every thoroughbred horse, it is said, can be traced back to one of three famous horses brought to England 200 years ago—Byerly Turk, Darley Arabian, and Godolphin Arabian. * * Just when the dog entered upon its period of domesticity is uncertain. Even in prehistoric times five different types of dog have been identified. One was a small dog distributed throughout Europe. The terriers and the spaniels and the “poms” probably are descended from this type. A similar but • larger species provided us with hunting dogs. * A type that roamed Northern Europe and Asia gave man the St. Bernard and Great Dane. Another extremely wolf-like type is the ancestor of every shepherd dog in the world. It will be seen, therefore, that it must have been something like 40,000 years ago that the wolf and the dog separated, if indeed, they were ever one and the same. In the matter of cows it is perhaps interesting to note that in the days of Caesar wild cattle roamed all over Britain. To-day only one herd of these originals now exists, at Chillingham Castle. The cows are well shaped, with short legs and straight backs. White in colour, these cows invariably have black muzzles, white horns with black tips, and red inside the ears. They never fatten and give little milk.

The deadly new bullet invented by a German is said to be capable of travelling at 4,000 miles an hour, setting a pace that verges on the astronomical. There is, however, still a gap to be filled before man can claim to have speeded up matter sufficiently fast to make the comparison fair. Some 4.000 miles an hour works out very roughly at one mile per second. Fast as this speed is compared, say, with a,motor car or even most projectiles, Nature would consider it on the slow side. The average meteorite that flashes into our ken some 60 miles or more above the earth is strolling along at over 10 miles a second and in some cases considerably more. The world on which we live is travelling round the sun at a speed of some 18 miles a second, otherwise Christmas would never come. But this speed pales into insignificance compared with the speed of the world and the whole planetary system as well as the visible stars, which are off on a trip into space at the rate of 1500 miles a second. Despite the pace it will be a few million million years before the collection of stars gets anywhere.

Possibly the* time may come when man will be able to hold his own with Nature in the matter of high speed. There is, however, a useful ‘limit to high speed beyond which strange things start to happen. At all speeds below seven miles a second a projectile after' flying through the air returns to the earth and with luck hits its target. Above a speed of seven miles a second the heaviest bombardment would have little effect because the shells would never return. They would leave the earth and become satellites to it, like the moon. A collection of “whizz bangs” for ever revolving round the world would immediately fail to interest an artillery man. A .303 bullet that went to fast that it never :ot there would be of little use to the infantry For shooting at other worlds, high speed projectiles, of course, would be essential. The one obstacle against this is the absence of any known explosive with sufficient thermal energy to generate a speed of seven miles a second.

There have been several inquiries recently about jubilee sixpences. Mr. Allan Sutherland, Honorary Secretary New Zealand Numismatic Society, who examined a specimen, writes :-—Reiative to the value of a Queen Victoria jubilee sixpence, ISS7 (second type), which was withdrawn after a short time in circulation: Despite the interesting history of .this coin it is listed at 1/- i/il" for specimens in mint condition. As you are no doubt aware this coin was withdrawn owing to the fact that the reverse design (the Royal arms encircled by a garter)' was such tliat when the coin was gilt it could be passed as a half-sovereign. For the most part the Queen Victoria sixpences range in value from 1/- to 2Z-, in mint condition, but there is one variety issued in IS7S with an error in the legend reading “Dritanniar.” This coin is valued at £l/1/- if in condition. From an examination of the price lists of two good firms I am satisfied-that your specimen, although interesting, is not worth more than the price named, above, 1/-,”