POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 143, 14 December 1938, Page 8

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

• Add definitions: Perfume —any smell that is used tb drown a worse one. * # * ■ Why shouldn't Auckland's governing cricket body protest against the choice ■ of T. C. Lowry as sole New Zealand selector? Lowry's not an Aucklander. B.G. .*• * * ' . K.E.P. —"Yes, my boy, insulation is • usually used to guard against shocks, but the current opinion is that in the Government's case it is a volte face." ■ ■ * -.-, * • Mr. J. A. Lee, the Government* weird wizard of finance, says Labour was returned to power to use the people's savings. If he had said "use up" their savings, we would have understood his meaning. B. ROKE. #* . » ASK YOURSELF! Dear Flage,—-School's in. Our Cal> met has given its reasons for, tha £7^000,000 loan, but will some of your constituents solve this problem. ' One business (lucrative) that does not keep books collects 1000 one pound notes from its customers. The boss toddles off to the Reserve Bank and hands over the £ 1000 as pay* ment for: a loan certificate. QUERY: Does deflation take place? ■ Q.E.D. *■. * * LETTERS FOR MUCK. When a telegram reaches the Post Office on the Isle of Eigg, in the Hebrides, for- any resident on the Isle of Muck, five miles away, a fire is lit "as a signal for the Muck ferry-boat to collect it. This is the basis of a complaint in a petition for a Post. Office received by the Postmaster-General* Major G. C. Tryon, from the people of the Isle of Muck: "We have to . send our boat across to Eigg for the mails, and the ferrymen have to walk four miles to and from Eigg Post Office and the pier. In the year 1938 we are as isolated as were our ■ forbears - in 1738." » * # GIANT RANUNCULUS. "Flower Lover" (Highland Park) thinks that gardeners may be interest* ed in the following note:— The floricultural world owes much to Luther Gage of San Luis Rey. He is the "father" of the internationally famous Tecolote Giant strain of ranunculus. This strain is conceded by experts to have the best colours possible. The Tecolote Giants are the results of a cross between the Palestine • and. Florentine native ranunculi. Gage did the initial hybridisation 15 years ago. That was just the start: As the result of the cross, he got hybrids ranging from the ordinary four-petalled red Persian type to giant six-inch flowers with 350 flowers. As the result of years of constant selection, he developed the Tecolote strain. When it was releasedto the horticultural world, European seedsmen sensed the value and trebled the price of the seeds and bulbs. Practically all garden stores today sell the Tecolote strain at moderate prices. The bulbs are available in single colours of red, gold, pink, white, cream, yellow, and giant mixed. # # * ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND. "PRICES HAVE DROPPED TERRIBLY," said the Hatter,.as?he helped himself to a second lump of- sugar/ "Oh! lim sorry foi*1 the poor .dairyfarmers," said Alice, "but. there's one good thing: the people will be glad to get cheap butter." "On the contrary," said the Hatter, "the people pay MORE for their butter and the farmers lose NOTHING." "Oh, do explain that to me," said Alice. "It's all so very strange." "Well," said the Hatter, "prices are stupid things and- drift about all over the .place so we FIXED THEM." "My word, that was clever," said Alice, "but didn't you just tell me that PRICES HAVE DROPPED TERRIBLIY." "Oh!" said the Hatter, "that's only market prices. THEY don't affect us. We're INSULATED." ;"And so," said Alice, "we really do have nothing to fear." "Nothing to fear," said the Hattpr. "I shall never let you down" and as he said it in that wonderful voice of his Alice really believed him. ROSENEATH /•■ ' # NEGLECTED POSSESSIONS. (This was sent us by Propius.) Here, sheltered from the ruin in this old garden shed I find myself alone with ill-assorted hosts Of objects, some still useful, others like the dead, • Things useless that survive as hauntingly as ghosts. In house-sale catalogues one sometimes finds a lot ' Made up of oddments, things one thought had scarcely names, Described and classified in that strange polyglot •Which valuers devise and poetry disclaims. Tail-pieces of some story no one can now read, The incongruity of such things is a spell— A sort of magic cross to exorcise the creed That there exist no thoughts the tongue can never tell. To me, -'fhen, here alone, the nameless / presences An unfamiliar forms that, as I watch them, start From every corner, say things no one ever says And seem to speak to me the language of my heart. —William Winkworth The "Listener." • • * , "BIG" MONEY! Do you want to get into the "big money"? You do? Well, you'll have to go to Yap Island, in the Caroline Group. From time immemorial natives there have used as money immense circular slabs of solid rock, resembling millstones, with a diameter of from Bft to 12ft, and a thickness of from six to 12 inches. These stone "coins" are quarried on Palao Island, some 250 miles from Yap, and transported to Yap on huge rafts towed by canoes. Some of the massive "coins" weigh as much as three-quarters of a ton, and because of this they are "minted" with a circular hole in the centre, so that a pole may be inserted to facilitate handling—the- "coins" being wheeled about instead of carried! It takes two natives all their time to move a single "coin." Known as "Fei," these unique "coins" have legally established values, estimated by hand-spans. The largest "coins" of 12ft in diameter are worth the equivalent of approximately £30. For "small change" the natives use trimmed and polished pieces of pearl shell, shaped like buttons. The big stone "coins" are much too bulky to be stored in a house, and wealthy natives usually display their rocky evidence of wealth in an unusual manner—by using the "coins" for a fenct around their homel