CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVIII, Issue 12935, 1 October 1902, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS.

The “Saturday Review,” the trade in a recent number, has an in bulbs. article on the London trade

in bulbs, which has a real, if somewhat second-hand, interest for us at this season of the year. s The market in Dutch and French and Japanese bulbs has grown to enormous dimensions of late years. Holland is still the largest producer, standing without a rival in tulips and hyacinths, which she cultivates purely on the commercial basis. Thanks largely to Messrs Barr, England has obtained the supremacy in the matter of narcissi, but in almost every other “line” the London dealers have to import their supplies. The flower-roots begin to arrive in London about the middle of August, and continue to be sold till December, and sales are held generally on five days a week. ' The figures are surprisingly large. The Japanese importations are almost entirely lilies, and last season 80 tons of the roots were sold in London, roughly three millions in number. The Dutch trade, of course, far surpasses the Japanese. The average sale of Dutch bulbs is 60 tons per week, or 2,500,000 in number. As the season lasts for sixteen weeks the sales reach the enormous total of 960 tons, say 40 millions of bulbs. Twenty-five years ago there was one sale a week, and one ton of bulbs would be offered. At the opening sale of the present season, on August 18/ twenty-five tons were disposed of. The Japanese trade has grown to ten times the dimensions of 1880. The French trade is chiefly in Roman hyacinths, and h forcing narcissi for indoor growing and nursery purposes, but the French have not-yet grasped the principle that a steady supply induces a steady damaud. The sale reaches about 6Q tons

in the season. The great expansion mi the whole trade has really Been coincident with the spread of the flower cult an Great Britain. The bulk of the supply, of course, is taken by dealers who distribute it over the kingdom, and even after ail tha handlers have taken their profits the price of Dutch bulbs remains so low that tha cottager can easily afford to purchase. hyacinths and tulips and crocuses. Tha bulbs, too, are planted in thousands in, public parks. Commerce in cheap things in these days, says the writer truly, usually, supplies the community with, objects of .unmitigated ugliness, but the trade in cheap bulbs constitutes a glorious exception to a squalid rule. Between the Kimberley Australian Goldfields and the north-' rock west coast of Australia is paintings, the unsettled i isolated and neglected Glenelg district of' Western Australia. It was visited in 1837 by Sir George Grey, who attempted -to make his way inland, and since then only two or three venturesome travellers have attacked the territory. Sir George followed the Glenelg River for some distance, making few discoveries of but during his journey he saw and made notes of soma mysterious rock paintings, quite unlike any other Australian aboriginal rock work. Tha first painting observed represented, in the discoverer’s own words, “ the figure of a man 10ft 6in in length, clothed from thechin downwards in a red garment, which reached to the wrists and ankles; beyond this red dress the feet and hands protruded', and were, badly executed. The face and head l of the figure were enveloped in & succession of circular bandages or rollers, or what appeared to be painted) to represent such. These were coloured red, and white, and the eyes were the only fea* tures represented on the face.” Sir George Grey’s descriptions have long puzzled ethnologists, and their reliability ;has been questioned'. Last year, however, Mr F„ Brockman, in charge of a Government survey party, rediscovered the paintings and obtained photographs of them. In an article in the “ Sydney Morning Herald” Mr Ernest Favenc discusses the general question of the origin and meaning of tha paintings, in the light of the observations of Mr F. M. House, a naturalist who accompanied Mr Brockman. Only one it seems, lacks the nose, but the mouth is invariably absent. Round the head is what appears to be a halo, and beneath’ the throat is an object that might be ai necktie. The drawings show remarkable uniformity. In the photographs, however, the garments seem Sometimes to resemble a shirt and trousers. “ That they date hack before the advent of the first known white men,” gays Mr House, in his notes, “we know from the discoveries of Grey; bub evidently they must have seen men with clothes at an earlier date, possibly shipwrecked mariners or Malays -who used to coma across to the coast to get beche-de-mer. It is probable that they copied their first drawing from some done by white men, and, the result being pleasing to them, the art was handed on. That they should adhere to one design shows either a great lack of originality or they attach great importance to that particular figure. ’*

Mr Favenc proceeds to the*

an "elaboration of quite an inf ingenious genious theory concerning theory. the paintings. The probabliity that the first design, was made by a castaway sailor, Spaniard or Portuguese, he argues, is very strong. A Dutch sailor would have been the most likely to have been lost on the north-west coast, but there are strong masons against its being the work of a Dutchman; At first sight, the resemblance of the figure to a rude tattooed copy of a saint is very striking, “ The knot on the breast,” he says, “ might well be intended for a heart, a common feature in such pictures; and this, combined with the halo (in one described by Grey there were alto glory rays) makes at .most) likely that it was meant for a representation of the Madonna. Grey says that soma of the figures he saw were, he imagined, ' intended to represent females ; ; and, although the mouth was not drawn, they were otherwise good-looking. A Dutchman would not have drawn the Madonna, but a Portuguese or Spaniard castaway in a savage country might well have solaced himself by devoutly drawing a representation of the Madonna, and the reverence with which ha regarded it has so impressed the friendly : natives amongst whom he was living that the execution of rude copies of his work’ became almost a tribal rite.” The variation in dress from the flowing garment of . the original to the shirt and trousers of later copies might have arisen from an attempt* on the part of the natives, to draw the dress of the sailor himself. The unusual care displayed in the drawings, and the fact that they occur in places sheltered from the weather, is taken to imply that they were held in respect by the tribes, and although the “rolls” described by Grey might represent a turban, Mr Favenc inclines strongly to ths halo theory. The Glenelg territory is hemmed in by inaccessible mountains and a. stormy coast, but is well watered, and fish are plentiful. The tribes doubtless had communication with the outer world, but not to any marked extent. Mr Faveno > thinks the paintings worthy of further examinationl, and suggests that a systematic! survey of the district might reveal fresh’ evidence of the authorship of the original drawing, which, he says, was “ certainly noil the work of the primitive Australian.”