"THE SILLY SEASON."

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 131, 29 November 1902, Page 13 (Supplement)

"THE SILLY SEASON."

Concerning the Bummer, "silly season" topic in the Loadon newspapers, Sydney Brooks says : — "Always, at the beginning of August, the editor of each London daily casts about for a subject that will 'fetch' the great British public and fill the correspondence column — such as 'Is Marriage a Failure? 1 'The Decay of Domesticity,' 'Ensrlish versus American Women,' 'why Don't Young Men- Marrj V 'Should Women Work? 1 or 'Are We Improvident?' A member of the paper's staff will wiiie a letter to the editor opening the ball. Another member will reply to him. Instantly from Olapham and Brixton, and throbbing provincial households, there sets in a steady stream of letters — all genuine, and argumentative, and, for the most part, quite appallingly earnest. It is a most curious phenomenon, such, 1 suppose, as no other country can show. For thousands of men and women these annual discussions would seem to be their 'only change of really opening their hearts and minds to the world ; and a very strange speotacle they make when opened, the minds, especially. No one who really wanted to study Eneland could ignore these debate* They throw more than a little light on the English character and the average English intelligence."

Darwin found in the earth adhering to the feet of a plover three different kinds of seeds;. In the mud sticking 1o the feet of English ducks and geese he detected the seeds of plants peculiar- to the Victoria Nyanzn, in Central Africa. By the aid of a microscope in the soil clinging to the feet of a Texas steer the seeds of five different kinds of weeds and grasses common in Texas were discovered at the opposite extremity of the continent-