RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 173, 19 April 1937, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.! Anyway, the Gale Comet ha's succeeded in starting a storm in a teacup. * ♦ * We note that discussions with Australia about the orange embargo may soon be reopened. The situation at the moment is that we have no oranges, but perhaps it’s small potatoes. We note that the New Zealand High Commissioner has been having dinner with the Worshipful Company of Paviours, and we wish someone would tell us if this refers to crazy paviours or just the normal variety. * « » “A.F.C.” writes: —“Would you let me know through your most interesting column, the correct name of the sailing ship mentioned in the enclosed clipping? I have seen the name spelled Halcyon, Halceon, Halcione and Halciom. My father came out on this ship on her maiden trip, which I thought would be earlier than 1871. I believe she was burned at Napier on the occasion of her second trip. Is that correct?” [The reference is probably to the Halcione. Built for Shaw, Savill Company in 1569 she completed 26 voyages to New Zealand before becoming wrecked off Wellington Heads on January 8, 1896. The vessel struck the shore between Pencarrow Head and Baring Head in a thunderstorm, that came when the wind whipped round from the north to the south. The finding of the court of inquiry was that the accident was caused through stress of weather, and that Captain Boorman was in no way to blame. Halcione left England May 28, 1569, on her first trip, arriving Wellington September 3 —98 days.]. * * * Having talked about the merits of stratosphere flight, a secret aeroplane is now being built for sub-stratosphere work. The facts are that the achievement of real stratosphere flight is not the simple thing that talk has made it appear. Air pressure at 20,000 feet is one-half what it is on ground level. Half the weight of the air is .still above us at that height. At 35,000 feet one-fifth of the air is above us. At 50,000 only one-ninth is above us, and at 200,000 feet one eight-thousandth of the air is still above. The lastnamed height is possibly ultra-strato-sphere. There are no technical difficulties in building sealed cabins which are necessary at heights above 20,000 feet. Yet the first machine provided with a pressure cockpit burst at only 30,000 feet. The chief difficulty is providing air for the engine. Up to about 20,000 feet the difficulty is solved easily. The higher we go the greater this difficulty becomes. Moreover, more air will be required to cool the engine. This means greater radiating surfaces. As the stratosphere is reached at, say, 50,000 feet, propeller problems become acute. Until, in fact, we discover that a machine suitable for stratosphere flight is quite unsuited to rise from ground level to fly to those heights. Composite machines have been suggested, the stratosphere machine being lifted to suitable heights by aerial tugs. * » « The attention that has been directed, by the sanitary inspector in Auckland, to the luxury of keeping rats, if anything, under-estimates the position. Rats filch from us so unobtrusively that we do not notice the loss. Actually it would pay handsomely to put down a sum of half a million pounds sterling for a contract to have all the rats in New Zealand eliminated. Estimates regarding rat populations vary. Experts are, however, of the opinion that the proportion on the average is five rats per person in the world. As there are 2,000,000.000 people in the world, there are 10,000,000,000 rats. The damage they do is about £1 a year per rat. The nations of the world have, therefore, been spending £10,000,000,000 a year feeding rats. This sum is equivalent annually to one-fifth the cost of the Great War. If this were diverted to better purposes than feeding rats, it could be used to provide everybody in the world with free houses, free education, expensive universities, all the freehold land in Europe, America and the Dominions, and then something to spare. Coming nearer home it is probably a fair estimate to say that there are nearly half a million rats in the fair city of Wellington taking toll annually to the tune of £500,000 a year. With that sum we could have done all that was required in the recent poll, with money to spare. Moreover, it would be money saved every year. We could pull down mountains, extend Rongotai and have th e loveliest little aerodrome in the Southern Hemisphere but for rats. If some Pied Piper came along and demanded £250,000 cash to eliminate our Wellington rats it would be shrewd business to pay him when he had done the job. At an international conference held in Paris some ten years ago experts who had studied the question declared that losses due to rats amounted to not less than £200,000,000 a year in the United States of America, £40,000.000 a year in France, £70,000.000 a year in Britain, and on a similar scale throughout other countries. If burglars broke into our buildings and levied this toll there would be an outcry immediately. Rats do the job so effectively and so cleverly few of us realise anything has been stolen from the community. It is all very well to declare a war on rats, but one should do so with a knowledge of the problem with which the attackers must contend. It is very little use organising an offensive, killing a few thousand or a few hundred thousand rats, and then stopping. If a pair of rats are allowed to breed for three years, covering IS generations, their progeny will number 359,709,482. Obviously, then, killing a few hundred thousand rats does little good if the task is not continued year after year. Even then, the rats will win out if the past is any criterion. Almost every expedient has been tried out on rats from poison gas to cats. Scores of different types of fatal bacilli have been used with inconclusive results. Female rats have been caught and males left in the hope th.at the males would fight it out to the death. Poison has been laid at the rate of thousands of tons a day the world over. Yet the rats contrive to multiply. Having learned to make buildings that are rat-proof, the next task of civilisation is to discover ho.v to make cities rat-proof. » * • Some of your hurts you have cured. And the sharpest you still have survived ; But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived. —Emerson