RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 184, 3 May 1934, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

Two New Zealanders have been awarded the Polar MedaL These chilly mornings all New Zealanders deserve the award. » ♦ *

The damage done by pot-hunters is stated to be negligible on Stewart Island. One wishes that this was true of other sports.

It is stated that the South Island has very few -white butterflies. This upholds the complaint that overseas visitors never have any time for the South Island.

“I am one of the many who derive both amusement and knowledge from your column,” writes “Scotty.” “Likewise I am Scotch and seek some cheap —ILI. worth —but sound advice. ‘A’ is the great-grandson of ‘B’ who married ‘C’s’ uncle’s aunt; what relation (they’re all Scotch ye ken) is ’A' to ‘O’? Hope you don’t get a headache." If Scotty can spare the time to find a solution to the following little problem in relationship “Kickshaws” perhaps might find the time to solve Scotty’s effort. Meanwhile readers may care to solve both. In looking at a picture of an individual a man said “Sisters and brothers he had none, but that man’s mother is my sister’s mother’s mother-in-law.” What relation is the speaker to the gentleman, who on a previous occasion, looking at the same photograph, said “Sisters and brothers have I none. But that man’s father is my father’s son.”

The new race of people reported to have been discovered in New Guinea is by no means the only new race, or old race refound, that has surprised investigators. When Alexander the Great started roaming about the world with his huge armies and his thousands of camp followers, many of them broke off from the main body and settled down in out of the-way parts on the borders of India. Only recently one of these new-old tribes was found by an exploring party on the north western hinterlands of India. They had a language that nobody understood which was said to he closely related to ancient Egyptian.

To this very day the lost tribe of Cagots still live and love in the remote fastnesses of the Pyrenees. This tribe is supposed to be the only known pure strain of Goths in the world. Tucked away here and there in the world have been found tribes which are so closely related to extinct types of man that experts can only believe that having been lost for tens of thousands of years they’were refound during the early stages of civilisation. There is, for example, a small tribe of Cro-Mag-non man, or his very close relatives, still in existence in France. Cro-Mag-non man became officially “extinct” some thousands of years or more before our civilisation began.

There are, of course, some people who consider that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel have been found comparatively recently in Britain. That, however, is a matter too lengthy for full details to be given in one short paragraph. It shows, however, that so-called new tribes are popping-up all over the world far more frequently than one imagines. Indeed a scientific expedition left some five years ago to search for a lost colony of 16th century Russian exiles in the lonely wastes of North Eastern Siberia. Actually a curious unknown tribe was found. The people of this tribe, it is said, speak old Russian and when found were unaware of anything that had happened in the outside world since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Two independent reports place this curious trilie somewhere near the mouth of the Indigirka river, Yakutsk, a part of the world given only sketchily in even the very best maps. The colony consists of only some 2,00 souls. Many Russians fled from St. Petersburg to the inaccessible parts of Siberia in the 16th century. It is considered highly probable that the members of the lost tribe found are direct descendants of these exiles

If it be true that New Zealand has now made a modest-step toward supplying a part of the world’s demands for cricket bats, it is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. At the moment, English willow has made a name for itself in this line, second to none other in the world. One can grow willows 'almost anywhere, and, indeed, in New Zealand they do grow almost anywhere, but cricket bat willow is a different proposition. At any rate, our modest entry into the realms of King Willow have come at a time when some little concern has been felt in England, owing to a curious watermark disease that has visited the cricket willows. A watery stain that has, in many cases, infected the wood, makes it useless for cricket bats. Although there are something like 170 different types of willow in the world, only one type is suitable for cricket bat's. Attempts so far to grow cricket willow in other countries have not met with the success of the English wood. Bats, for example, made from Indian willow, lack drive. Cricket bat willow is certainly an asset to any country, as some £l5 may be obtained for a single tree. , .

There used to he an old country saying In England, that the profit by willows will buy the owner a horse before that by any other trees will pay for a saddle. Indeed, one willow tree, it is recorded, furnished no fewer than 10011 cricket bats. Essex and Hertfordshire are the home of cricket—so far as the bat is concerned. As much as £7O has been paid for a good tree suitable for bat-making. One willow 100 feet high, with a girth of 10 feet, made a profit, when sold as hats, or some-£5OO. An idea as to how willow can enhance the value of a piece o land, may be had from the fact that a Sawbridgeworth, in Hertfordshire, a certain piece of land in ISS'J was worth £5O. It was planted with willows suitable for cricket bats. In 161 years tio trees were sold for £2OOO. In another case willows, sold only for poles, yielded a profit of £214 an acre. There are. of course, willows and willows 11m smallest never attains more than wo or three inches in height. The ta h <•- mav grow over 100 feet High. Apart from cricket, willow gave our fo - bears their wattle houses. It was willows that gave ns the basket over n thousand years ago To-day it . -. willow that gives us cricket. lieu, is no artificial substitute for a willow cricket bat. ‘‘Maryland” writes Would you kindiv give me advice, in your column, as to" whether there were horse-drawn trams in Wellington in 1882, If not. when were they first started? [The steam trams, started in IS7H. came before the horse (rams. They wore converted to horse traction in 1882. ]