RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 171, 16 April 1937, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.! Franco’s threats, it is alleged, are one huge bluff. Well, a bluff is as bad as a precipice to lead Europe over. « * * The new laughing jackasses in the Wellington Zoo, it is stated, already have relatives there. Inside or outside the bars? * * * The Minister of Public Works, we note, has flown to the South Island to fire a shot. Presumably he left his usual broadside behind because there wasn’t room in the aeroplane. * * * .“Here’s a little problem to keep the children quiet,” says “G.P.0.” “A man left for France after giving instructions to his valet to forward all correspondence. Eventually his valet wrote to say that he could not forward any letters because the letter-box into which the postman inserted them every day was locked. On receiving this information the man posted the key from Paris. Still he got no letters — why?” 444 How, ask experts, is the Empire to survive if, in a century, the population of Britain declines to that of the County of London. The answer obviously is that it won’t. The fallacy, however, is that forecasts of the future are based on present trends. Accurate as these have been in the past, they may not continue to be so. The method of basing the future on present trends becomes more and more accurate the nearer the future. One could not possibly hope to forecast the population of Britain 200 years hence. There are too many unknown factors that might completely upset the forecast. In the year 1800 the population of England was 9,000,000. There was nothing to indicate that in 1937 it would be 40.000,000. Based cn the past the population ought to have increased at about 2,000,000 a century. Actually, it increased by ten times that total. Not even all the modern facilities for guess work could have foretold population futures accurately in the year 1800. Moreover, at that time nobody could have even guessed that 25,000,000 people from Europe were destined to leave for the New World. The schoolboy who has pointed out that fish are dying in large numbers in Black Creek, Lower Hutt, has at least drawn attention to the fact that, good fighters as many fish are when hooked, they usually put up a very poor fight when their water, for some reason, becomes contaminated. Some idea of the sensitiveness of fish to foreign substances in their water may be had from the fact that one part of petrol in 100,009 of water will kill a trout in two minutes. Fish are peculiarly susceptible to very small quantities of impurity in their water. So much so, that whereas salmon used regularly to run up the Thames they have not done so since London started to expand. Moreover, the Fowey, in Cornwall, was once a noted salmon stream until a mine started operations a few miles above tide water. Impurities pumped into the stream killed the fish and prevented any salmon coming up stream. Some years ago at Droitwich a quantity of brine water was accidentally allowed to overflow into the canal which runs from Droitwich into the Severn. The whole surface of the canal was covered with dead fish as a result. Fish are killed far easier by methods other than rod and line, which is. in fact, about the most difficult way to kill a fish. Even cold water has been known to kill fish. On one occasion when the water was low in the River Nene, near Peterborough, England, it became warmed by the sun. Suddenly some nearby sluice gates were opened admitting a rush of cold water into the stream. Hundreds of fish died in a few minutes, and floated on the surface. Coal-dust covering the surface of the water in which they live is fatal ito fish, as, of course, is sawdust. Yet fish given time, two or three million years, contrive to adapt themselves to all manner of strange conditions. There are fish, in fact, which have learned to do without waiter for five or six months in the year. Moreover, some types of salman have learned to cross dry land in order to get from one stream to another. A Canadian fisheries inspector can vouch for this apparently firstclass fishing yarn. * $ ♦ “A visitor to New Zealand made the comment that people in this Dominion were very heavily taxed, much more so than the peoples of England and Australia. I shall be glad if you will inform me through your column if this is correct, as I believe he is wrong,” says “Jay Bee.” [The secretary to the Associated Chambers of Commerce, Mr. A. O. Heany, has kindly provided the following facts: Total Australian (Commonwealth and States) taxation for the year ended June 30, 1936, was £l5/9/11 per head of population. For the year ended March 31, 1936, State taxation in New Zealand amounted to £l6/5/9 per head of population. Similar figures for the United Kingdom are not available, the latest figure being £l6/3/7 per head for the year ended March 31, 1935. The increases in taxation in New Zealand for 1936-37 are estimated as being equivalent to an extra £2/17/3 per head, making a total of £l9/3/- per head. Then there is the matter of taxation by local bodies. The latest figures available from Australia covering the various local authorities—whose financial years end on different dates during 1934 and 1935 —show local body taxation at that time to be £l/18/6 per head of population, as compared with £3/17/9 taxation per head of population in New Zealand for roughly an equivalent period. No comparable figures arc available for the United Kingdom.)

“Well - Wisher” writes“ Having heard from my youth up that visitors to Rome, if they called upon the Pope, were obliged to kiss his big toe; as you seem to know about everything, I’ll be much obliged if you will answer the above through your valuable column.” [Kissing the Popo’s toe has never been part of the ceremony of an audience with the Pope. It was a term of contempt invented by those who did not belong to the Roman Catholic faith. It is not now usual to kiss the Pojie’s foot or slipper, although until quite recently this was done. To-day the more usual ritual is to kiss the Fisherman's Ring on his finger. At an audience the Pope passes down the line of kneeling people holding out his hand so that each person may kiss the ring. Etiquette demands that none shall rise until the Pope has passed the thirtieth person from him. On the advice of liis physicians, the Pope has recently discontinued the custom of allowing pilgrims to kiss his hand. This is, however, still done in private audiences.]