SCIROCCO.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3130, 14 August 1922, Page 2

SCIROCCO.

. H Italian wakes up in the mornnifi with an innate sense that God is not in his heaven and all is not'right with the world he knows at once that the Scirocco is blowing. It is the worst wind that over scourges God’s earth. It makes everyone run on the rims, the kindest person becomes snappy. Ihe man who has ever suffered from nerves feels that his bad times are coming back again. I’lven the dogs go for the cats—a thing they rarely do in Italy, the land of mutual animal understanding, where there is really an animal kind of league of nations. 'that Scirocco! You go out in the morning in -thin clothes and yet feel sweltering heat. But the Romans have their thick toga-like cloaks pulled up to their noses. The next moment you are cold, and think that the Romans have inherited weather wisdom from their ancestors. Everv_ window in flic tramears is closed—in Scirocco. The conductor never has any change in Scirocco. The cabman, wbo will follow you a hundred yards in ordinary weather scowls at you when you hire him-—in Scirocco. So the weary day drags through to the evening. Then comes from the sea the delicious breeze which has kept Rome alive through so many age-hardened centuries. 11 never fails even after Scirocco, hut it only comes in the evening. And if next morning it 1 is Sciroeeo again Rome groans as the chariot wheels groaned through its scarred stoneways when the world was younsrer. Scirocco is only the south-east wind, hut it carries with it all the baleful, odious, malicious, cantankerous elements in tlie world. The skin burns and is yet cold; the body shivers and is yet warm. Every one is every other’s adversary. The very clouds seem to hate each other. Four days of it and you begin to fear that the world will not come to a sudden end! Then the fifth day dawns. The blue sky— r ‘azzuro,” they call it in Italy—beams on the land. The sunlight falls on the walls and on the' streets in lines as sharp and straight as if they had been ruled off. The hoys in the streets whistle. The girls sing. The conductor has plenty of change. The cabman seeks fares. The cats and the dogs fraternise again. Everyone is happy. 'i’iie Tramontana, tlie bracing north wind, is blowing. The world is horn again. ‘‘That the Minister for Public Works he asked if the time has not come when valuable lands liable to be flooded should he protected and drained. The principal cause of flooding and the consequent destruction yearly, assuming larger proportions is mainly the silting up of the lakes and rivers, caused chiefly by the debris from mining. Dredging is the chief remedy, tlie major proportion of the cost of which should he borne by the Government.” was moved by Mr J. Craig (Otago), and carried unanimously, at a conference in Wellington of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. Something new in the way of harvesting machinery comes from Canada. A demonstration has been given with a machine that cuts and threshes a crop in one operation. Tlie cut crop is forced into a miniature thresher, the clean grain poured into one hag, and the screenings into another. A special forecast of the Indian wheat crop, published by the Department of Statistics, gives the .area, sown as 28.680.000 acres, as compared with 25,.821,000 in 1920-21. The yield is estimated at 852.055,000 bushels. The previous harvest, which was affected by drought, only produced 250,472,000 bushels.