TOPICS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 5, 7 January 1928, Page 12

TOPICS OF THE DAY

In claiming for afforestation land that is not economically suited to farming on present cost-biisis, the Hon. O. j. Hawken is proceeding on a commonsense principle, and ho should be well fitted to apply it with discrimination, for he is farmer first and tree-grower afterwards, and he is Minister of Agriculture at the same time as he is Commissioner of Forests. He is also one of those politicians who have not been spoiled by politics, and he should be just the sort of man to hold the balance fairly between grass and trees. In the past far too many trees have been destroyed to make room for grass that never held, and the country has at last seen the unwisdom of removing forest and receiving in return an indifferent pasture or no pasture at all, with such incidental consequences as noxious weeds, eroded hillsides, blocked rivers, and the flooding of arable lands. If forestry and settlement had been properly co-ordinated from the time when the country had its developmental beginning eighty or ninety years ago, a huge amount of economic loss would have been prevented. To hold the balance fairly as between grass and trees, one has to measure, as far as possible, such new factors as the pulping industry, concerning which the Minister gave the nurserymen this week most hopeful repoTts. There is a possibility that pulping science may convert trees like the J abundant tawa from waste asset into j ready money. But a pulping industry, | even if commercially sound, needs big. capital, technical brains, and a gifted leader. * * * After observations made in many cities abroad, Mr. Gray Young is convinced of the civic value of art galleries. Support for this view can bo obtained, however, without leaving New Zealand shores. In. other towns, including some much smaller than Wollington, the art galleries are a great attraction for visitors and residents. Here, most visitors and many residents never find the .Art Gallery, and thoso who do find it are amazed at the inadequacy of accommodation. This has been fully understood and much regretted by a group of enthusiasts who have been planning and working for years to secure a gallery more worthy of the ! Capital City. There is a prospect -of their efforts proving 'successful if a definite pla- can bo submitted for public support. But first it is necessary that tho question of site should bo settled. A comprehensive plan has been prepared for the Mount Cook site, and this now awaits the Government decision. The plan, has been endorsed by a town-planning expert, and there appears no reason for longer withholding Government sanction for tho scheme. # # # By tradition, tho Christmas holiday season is a time of entertaining and feasting. In the Southern Dominions th© reversal of tho seasons has weakened the tradition; but it still retains much foree —sufficient to interest us in a recent discussion in tho London "Times" as to tho true form and ingredients of pies. The discussion began with a protest against tho tendency to confuse the terms pic and tart; and it produced an authoritative definition from the manager of Simpson Viu-the-Strand. New Zealanders who know their London will acknow-

lodge the weight of this authority. Tho manager of Simpson's, however, did not rely solely upon the traditions of his house. He went back to a literary authority on thiiigs English:— "When Charles Dickens asked for pie (he wrote), ther© was no doubt about what he meant; whether it was apple pie, steak and kidney pie, or lark pie, he meant and got that delicacy, made in a pie dish, th© interior having been cooked together with and under its golden pastry cover. Nowadays there seems to be a feeling that these old fruit pies should be called tarts. Why? Those who ask for tart should be, and are, given, I hope, that confection on which tho fruit or tho jam is cooked resting upon the pastry. American visitors generally make themselves clear by calling our English pies deep-dish pies, which certainly leaves no room for doubt as to what is meant." A "Times" leader-writer, however, while endorsing this opinion, was distressed to find that the pleaders for old-fashioned usage were not supported in very high quarters. "Tho great Oxford Dictionary fails them, as it were, in the very moment of victory by pusillanimously admitting, after defining a tart in perfect language, that tart for pie is 'now in polite and fashionable use,' though not a single example docs it quote to bear out that statement. Worse still, Mr. Fowler, whose book on modern English usage is well known *or its paralysing effect on writers who road it, lays it down, as if it admitted of no possible dispute, that a tart contains 'fruit or sweet stuff,' and that a pie contains 'meat or savoury dtuff.' Admittedly it is {i blow to find authority throwing up tho sponge in this manner; but Oxford has a weakness for being thought up to date. Otherwise there was a chance that Mr. Fowler would have put tarts, when they are pies, among tho 'genteelisms' of a society which calls a napkin a serviette, assists rather than helps its friends to potatoes, and speaks of tho coalscuttle as the purdonium." For the defection of Oxford and Mr. Fowler the writer found some consolation in tho faithful adherence of' nursery rhymes. "The blackbirds were in the pie; and the Queen of Hearts, unless her artists have all gone wrong, made her tarts with the jam visibly on them." No mention is made of the Christmas pie which little Jack Homer investigated with satisfaction to himself but at the expense of his reputation for table manners. Possibly the writer suspected that "pie" in this instance was justified only by "poetic license." In any event Homer's Christmas pi© was surely truer to name than the stowed fruit and independent pastry squares which too often masquerade as pie on present-day monus.