MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS

Evening Post, Volume XCIX, Issue 71, 24 March 1920, Page 5

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS

VALUABLE VANITY PROFESSOR BICK.ERTON IN CHEERY MOOD. (PROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 14th January. In a lecture, mainly dealing with plant life, at the Botanical Museum, Professor A. W. Bickerton incidentally remarked that women who too lavishly applied peroxide of hydrogen to their hair wero not altogether to be despised. Plants, he pointed out, were chiefly dependent for existence on the sun, every square inch of which was better than tho intensest electric arc, and beside whose magnitude the earth dwindled to a speck of cosmic dust. The complexities of the way in which plants grew were not yet fully understood. With regard to their need of gases derived from the air, he ea_id: "A reasonable amount of oxygen is not a bad thing for the hair, and a little peroxide of hydrogen is quite a good means of cleansing the hair from the dust that accumulates in London. Do not, therefore, altogether despise the people who overdo it, and suddenly appear with golden heads. You may put it down to vanity, of course, but I have come to the conclusion that a certain amount of vanity is a valuable factor ia evolution, So whan you see a girl wearing a bright bit of linen, appreciate it as something to be encouraged. The whole scheme of nature is designed to be productive of, joy, and we, by study, are approaching nearer to the mysteries of life." '