BRITAIN THE LAND OF HOBBIES

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 30 September 1933, Page 14

BRITAIN THE LAND OF HOBBIES

QTAY- AT- HOME Britons do not realise that their isle is the land of hobbies. After an experience of some half-hundred countries, I should almost hazard the assertion that there are more people witn -a hobby in Britain than in the rest of the habitable globe; and their interests certainly show: a greater diversity than l is to be found abroad, says a' writer n the “Manchester Guardian.''’ There are many who collect other people’s property by accumulating railway tickets, which really are only lent us for the duration of the journey. There is a London barrister, who has 20,000, from all over the world. Another Londoner is a head-hunter who has some dozen skulls from ISTew Guinea, h T ew Zealand, and elsewhere. Penny toys make a fascinating collection in the course of time, as can be seen from the wonderful exhibit given to the London Museum, which will be of . great interest to future generations. 1 know of a woman whose hobby is cutting jigsaw puzzles. .She has made nearty 7000, each averaging about 300 pieces, though one needed 2000. Several people collect mechanical puzzles. I ' Others collect toy soldiers. There is an heraldic scholar who has made a! wonderful" collection of toy soldiers, j each an historically accurate model of | a fourteenth-century ancestor. “When| I started to make them,” he toid a caller. “I nearly blew up myself and j the house several times' by pouring molten metal into moulds which were j not quite dry. My wife lived in perpetual fear until the system was per- 1 fected. ” | The collection of matchbox labels is an interesting hobby. It is amazing j to discover how many thousands are discoverable, from all over the world: j Japan has a most picturesque range of i varieties. If that does not appeal to > you try keeping ants in a glass box called a formicarium, a hobby indulged j in by so many enthusiasts that a large j London shop stocks these ant-farms asj a 1 regular article of commerce. j I know a man who collects unusual' liqueurs and cordials which crop up j surprisingly, here and there, around! the earth; he found three in Corsica which have considerable vogue, though | they do not appear to have found their i way to British marts of commerce. Al l friend of his in the Far East pursues j with avidity the odd hobby if collect-j - ing faked brands of ’Scotch whisky, of, i which he has some thirty bottles, all ; different, and several bearing a label ] betraying only by a slight misprint s that it is of local origin—until the con- t

Lure of Amassing Collections

tents are sampled. The bulk of them 1 come from Japan. ‘ There is the headmaster of a school who has a 1 glass case full of things sequestrated from boys found playing j with them in class, including a sixchambered revolver. i The accumulation of free samples, |to the number of many hundreds, amusingly fills in the spare time of J quite a small army of Britons. I Kot long after the world war there was an epidemic lof ' collecting the . back destination boards of buses in | varous parts of the country, a hobby j calling for not a little misplaced enterprise, verve, and resource, which the I police discouraged. Oxford and Cami bridge have known many analogous (waves of odd acquisition. | On an ethically superior plane is the ! collection of spider’s webs, mounted between thin sheets of glass. I have heard of a man whose hobby is accumulating sloughed skins of snakes, similarly mounted, and of another "who has a fascinating array of hundreds of tiny eggs of butterflies and moths, preserved in transparent wax. A London banker has a collection of forged cheques, and a clergyman collects ancient stayPbusks dating back in some cases to Elizabethan days. Making reproductions of translucent objects such as insects’ wings, flower petals, leaves, feathers, and so forth, by printng on se±£-toning photographic paper and fixing with hypo solution, is a revelation of many of the usually overlooked beauties of nature. And there is a Tetired marine engineer whose hobby, backed up with ingenious models, is trying to convince the world that the fish’s tail is the only true model for marine propulsion. There are thousands of Britons whose hobby is model aeroplanes, and tens of thousands who are as enwrapped as • any boy in model trains, yachts, and steamers. Every obscure field of natural history, involving the .study of even the tiniest insect and plant, has its .brotherhood of student-collectors; many hundreds, at least, of men and women are keen students of prehistoric remains and collectors of weapons and implements of palaeolithic and neolithic dines. Boys are much greater hobbyists than girls, and men than women, loubtless because men have more spare time and there is always something practical, if not urgent, which a wonan feels she ought to do. Machinery md wireless now oecupy more of a joy’s time, but after adolescence lads eem to take to miscellaneous hobbies is often as ever they did.