NATURE AND MAN.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12750, 4 January 1936, Page 12

NATURE AND MAN.

PICNICKERS AND TRAMPERR RISKS FOII EGBERTS (Edited by Leo Fanning) The holiday season of high summer always brings risks of damage to forests hy fire and the spoiling of beauty spots by raids on I'erps and the scattering of tins, bottles and other discards of picnickers. Smokers and billy boilers are again earnestly requested to remember that a carelessly thrown cigarette butt or glowing dottle of a pipe or live ashes of a pic-nie fire can cause much mischief.

Small children are usually eager to pick wild flowers and fonts. They have an eagerness to possess the beauty, even when it is doomed to wither quickly in their little warm hands. It. is the duty of the elders to teach the young folk to bo kind to (lie wild things of nature. This subject is helpfully mentioned hy a contributor to “Nature Magazine” in an article aptly headed “Guests in the House of Nature.” “ ‘Mother Nature’ is a. phrase that, should nof be spoken without thought of its meaning, hut rather with full intent and reverence,” remarks the writer. “Nature not only is our mother by generation, but-, a true mother, she offers always that solace we humans so often sorely need. Whore do we turn, instinctively, to rest the body and soothe the spirit? Whore to escape from the rush and jangle of every-day life, and to seel: respite, even if briefly from clashing human contacts? Where hut to Nature, her woodlands and waters, to he at one for a t-imo with frees and herbs, and nil living filings?

“Seekers of recreation, comfort, peace, we are guests in Nature’s house, and wo should so conduct ourselves. Not only courtesy as guests, but gratitude as pilgrims to a healing shrine, should guide our actions. How then do wc behave? Alas! that it must ho confessed man’s behaviour towards Nature has been as a rule anything hut that of a courteous guest or a grateful worshipper. Rather has he been an ingrate and a vandal.”

MAORI REVERENCE OF EGBERT GOD A delightful description of an oldtime Maori house-warming by Janies Cowan makes one wish that presentday Maoris and other New Zealanders had the fioresf-reverencp of the Maori ancestors. Here is Mr- Cowan’s chronicle:

Tlie liouse-blessing hy the native priest begins with a charm to propitiate Tnne-Malnfta, tile god of 1 ftlioi great forests, from whose domain the trees wore taken to build the house. Tano’s forests are sacred ; those towering children of the wood gods must not bo tolled for any light reason; it is a serious matter to lay an axe to a great totara or red or white pine, nr a kauri rising there like a solemn, king of the forest, a veritable embodiment of the spirit of the bush..

Then comes the chant for the removal of the tapu from the chisels, mallets and axes used in working the timbers of fane into carved figures representing gods and departed sacred chiefs. Tlie tools used by the carvers are placed in front of the house while this chant is recited. In some tribes the twig of the rata tree is used hy the priest to tap the tools and the principal carvings while he recites his runic measures.

Next, the house is addressed ns a personification of the forest god. It, is Taue regarded as a homo for man. This is a. finely poetical passage. It prays that tho various parts of the building may be hound firmly together so that, it may stand stoutly steadfast :

“Bind together, 0 Tone, that into thee may not. enter the cold and stormy elements—the Frosty Wind, the Great Rain, tho Long Rain, the Cold' Sleety Rain, the Hailstones. Stand firmly, O Tane. against the assault of the God of Gales, Tawhirimnten ! May all he safe and warm within they walls.. These 'shall dwell within thee—Warmth, lTeaped-up Warmth and Glowing Meat—these are tins persons that dwell with'll thee, O Time, standing there be'ore me. May all bo joyful within thy walls !”

“THE WORLD’S WQXDEK WALK” Tt, is the heartfelt hope of many New Zealanders that the new tourist highway to Milford Sound will not tend to mar the beauty of the famous scenery in the region of “The World’s Wonder Walk” which Miss B. ,E. Baughan has brightly described in. “Studies in New Her© is one glimpse of a bird sanctuary:

“As you walk up this enchanted forest aisle, breathing its fragrance of moss and fern, wholesome rich decay, and richer growth, parrakeets, in colour so like the foliage that they are hard to distinguish, herald you, wo would hope inappropriately, with cries of ‘Per-etty bad ! Per-etty bad 1’ The tui pipes overhead in tones sweeter than those of the thrush, and. not unlike them—only he varies them with chuckles and snores, for he is a horn wag. The dainty little fantail oomes, friendly and inquisitive, to flirt his pretty fan of brown and white and tumble aerially for his dinner, full in the stranger’s face- Bush kvrens and ‘riflemen,’ tiny bunches of green and brown feathers with no tails at all to flirt, tinkle their little chimes from every covet; tom-tits, with coats of coal, vests of primrose, and surprisingly big pates of ruffled black velvet, peer bright-eyed from the branch tips to see what food your footsteps have brought into the light; and somewhere in the green clouds overhead you are sure to hear a bellbird fluting or the rush of a kaka’s wings. Yon ‘'may even see the latter — ho is a, parrot—walking warily along a branch, with toes turned in and ivise grey head bent over; and as he twists and turns, you can admire his collar of glancing rubies, and his breast of shimmering garnet, and green, though not till he flies off will he show you what crimson he carries beneath' each wing, to match the mistletoe. “You can scarcely fail to meet the inquisitorial eye of the weka (wood.