INKY MORSELS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume VLI, Issue 3420, 16 December 1935, Page 8

INKY MORSELS

CASUAL COMMENT COLUMN OBSERVATIONS—SNIPPINGS —CONTRIBUTIONS. (By Ferox). Tucked ar. ay on a back page of Friday’s Gazette was a paragraph stating that the ■ Plains County Council’s meeting room fireplace kerb was the “witness-box” for a judicial hearing on Thursday. Although courts are usually held in buildings specially designed for their austerity and discomfort many of the licensing courts of this country, and which have authority greater than the Supreme, Court, choose to sit where their “customers” prefer. But even criminal courts sometimes do this and there are many cases on record of hearings in hospitals. Circumstances sometimes occur to make a judge hold court in the most unusual places. Judicial officers, magistrates and judges indeed have full power to transfer their jurisdiction temporarily almost anywhere. A man charged with murder in Gloucester, England, arrived from gaol in an ambulance. It was impossible to take him inside the courtroom. Magistrates, police and other officials nevertheless held the court in the middle of the street. As a result of the evidence the man was discharged. s> * In at least one case a court has been held inside a motor-car. An elderly lady of Rushall, Staffordshire, the victim of a motor accident, was unable to make her way through the twisty corridors to the local court. So the court came to her in her car. Two magistrates settled down on the seats in the car. The windows were occupied on either side by rival solicitors. The good woman was examined and evidence taken down in shorthand. In Ireland on one occasion a court once held continuous sittings in the Chapel Royal, Dublin. The chancel was screened off and a raised dais installed. Sitting between pews formerly used by the Royal Family and the Lord Lieutenant four judges busied themselves with thousands of Circuit Court appeals.

* * * In Vienna after the disturbance of 1927 courts were held anywhere room could be found for a judge and witnesses, because the Palace of Justice had been destroyed by fire. One judge, it is stated, was forced to suspend sittings in a shed on account of the cold. Proceedings therefore were stopped until either warmer weather arrived or some stoves. Indeed there have been emergency applications of jurisdiction on golf links, wayside inns and under the greenwood tree in forests. One respected wearer of the ermine made himself famous by granting five, days’ injunction without leaving his bath- The law of course is the same wherever the court is held, except in the case of the sickroom. So anxious is the law to close the net round a murderer in the case of “dying declarations” that the ordinary rules regarding hearsay evidence are relaxed. The expiring words of a witness may be taken down and used as evidence against a prisoner in subsequent proceedings, on the capital charge. * # * With summer comes the house-fly, says a heading in Friday’s G-azette, raising the query as to where do they come from, and where do they go in the winter time. It is apparent that the fly is like the immortal Topsy who “just growed,” for a prolific housefly, if left to its own devices, could produce 6,000,000,000,000 des-' cendants in four months or so. Its descendants could continue the good work simultaneously until in a year the world would be so full of houseflies there would be no room for anything else. This state of affairs mercifully can never happen, partly because there would not be enough food and partly because the enemies of the housefly keep its riotous breeding propensities in check. Few of us realise that man’s worst foe is to be found in the insect vmrld. By sheer power to multiply the insects, if given a chance, could overwhelm us and all that is ours in a very short time. sis * * It is no use shutting one’s eyes to the danger that knocks at the door of civilisation from the insect world. Insects are eating a way into civilisation night and day. Thanks to the birds, the danger rarely reaches alarming proportions. But for natural foes even a little insignificant thing like an aphis would kno'ck humanity sideways in a very short time. One little aphis weighs less than can be measured on most scales. Yet if there were food enough and suitable

conditions an aphis could produce descendants in a year that weighed 822,000,000 tons. * * * Motorists in the North have been complaining of the damage done to roads by flooding so it may not be out of the way to point out that some of the responsibility for floods must be taken by roads. Last Friday’s Gazette mentioned a road in Canterbury which for 113 miles was sealed to a width of 20 ft. Think of the rain that this sealed. surface will shoot off to the rivers far quicker than ever before when ruts and potholes seemed to collect water and hold it till well into each summer. To-day, carefully graded and surveyed drains are provided to carry the water away as quickly as possible and it may be that there are occasions when these drops are just sufficient to cause rivers to break their, banks. * * * In this period of drought it may be found cooling to look into the question of floods, hence it is interesting to note that confirmation of the story of the Great Flood is said to have been obtained by experts after digging for 12 seasons at Ur of the Chaldees. The fact is that the stories in the Old Testament are now being proved to be far closer to fact than was ever expected. Not only was there a real tower of Babel, not only did the walls of Jericho well and truly fall down flat, and not only was there a great flood, but there was also an ark. Noah it seems, really did build an ark. Indeed an expedition is hard at work digging up Noah’s home-town of Shurrupak to find out more about him and his remarkable foresight. Some 6000 years ago, it seems, an ancient Babylonian named Uta-Naphistim, the Noah of the Bible, had a hunch that a terrible flood was coming. In spite of the jeers of his friends, he built a vessel, gathered the animals into it and rode out the rising waters that actually did descend upon his town.