CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 6835, 16 April 1932, Page 5

CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE

CRUMBLING AWAY Cleopatra’s needle is crumbling away. The millions of Londoners to whom it is a familiar landmark on the Thames Embankment have come to regard it as something almost everlasting. It stood in Egypt when Abraham walked the sands. Queen Cleopatra saw it, and Moses played round it when a child. Three thousand years of the. sun and sand and rain of Egypt left it undamaged, but 50 years of the London atmosphere have been too much for it. It was erected in its present position in September, 1878. Experts who examined it lately discovered that the edges are bcco. ling blurred, the stone is rotting, the surface is becoming pitted, and it is feared that in another few years its familiar outline will be altogether, lost unless some means can he found to save it, or . it is removed to a more friendly air. The London County Council has ord- * ered a special inspection to be made at once to find the extent of the damage. Sulphuric acid is the agent at work. It comes from the sulphur in chimney smoke. Mixed with the damp air this , forms the acid which settles in the fogs \ of the stonework and gradually cats it away. Mr Alan E. Munby, the architect who has made a special study of the subject, said that in his opinion the only way to save Cleopatra’s Needle would bo to wash it down with clean water from hose pipes at least once a month.