ROTARY CLUB

Northern Advocate, 10 July 1925, Page 3

ROTARY CLUB

FOURTH WEEKLY LUNCHEON".

There was a fairly good attendance at the weekly luncheon of the Whangarei Rotary Club on Tuesday. The president, Mr. D. A. McLean, intro- ; duced Botarian Campbell (Dr. J. G.) a? speaker for the day. The subject of his discourse was a portion of the anatomy of a bird, the gizzard. The explanation of this important organ, its formation and functions and the intricacies of the digestive apparatus of all bird and animal life, proved most interesting. The speaker very aptly compared the gizzard to a mill, in which the food to be digested was ground. The common domestic fowl could be observed picking up grit and gravel to supplement or replenish its stock of grinding material, and not infrequently selected a pebble too large to pass i&to the gizzard, the result often proving fatal. The speaker naively added, however, ! that in cases of this sort amateur poultry keepers were wont to resort to j the simple expedient of tickling the I back of the sufferer's throat with a j feather dipped in kerosene, "a course I of action which," he added, "is hardly I successful. ?'

Eotarian Campbell dwelt at some length upon the valuable investigation work done by a naturalist/ of the ISth century, one, John Hunter. This enthusiast provided naturalists with, data which assisted them to an immeasurable extent in their research. An ostrich gizzard, dissected by Hunter, revealed amongst other things 49 bronze coins, which judging from their polish and knife-like edges had been doing duty as for a considerable time. A story in connection with the wonderful assimilative powers of the ostrich—the authenticity of which was not vouched for—was related by the speaker. An ostrich was once observed to pick up and swallow ... the Book of Common Prayer, and an onlooker, being curious to observe the *,effect of this strange article of diet upon the digestive faculties of the jbird, at once killed it and held a post- ' mortem examination. The major portion of the book had naturally been out of all recognition, r"but," said the speaker, "judge of j the investigator's surprise to find the Thirty-nine Articles still intact." I An interesting type of gizzard, that of the , srtake-bird, or '' darter,'' was < described 'by Rotarian Campbell as J having a fringe of hair provided, 1 through which it strained the "crush- ' ed" flesh of its staple food, the fish, to exclude tlie bones from the stomach. Other forms of animal life, as apart from birds, were stated to have such a wonderful stomachic organization that it was common belief at one time that they possessed a type gizzard.

Four cases in point were the gizzard j trout, the grey mullet, the crocodile j and the ordinary domestic ox. A j crocodile killed upon the banks of the j Nile, was found to have in its ! stomach three sheep hoofs, a donkey' 3 bridle, an ear-ring: and various other articles, while the ystomach. of a croe- • odile shot by Roostevelt in the Congo regions yielded up] the claws" of" r a cheetah, : a pair jof sable antelope horns, and the bones of an impala, a { species of; lesser aijtelope. Yet anoth- [* ar saurian monster' of great size, shot j in Portuguese East Africa, was found j to contain 42 Kruger sovereigns. ( In explaining the complicated stom- ' ach of the ox, Rotarian Campbell ad- ! vanced a novel and interesting theory j to account for the ruminative habit of ! its kind. In days gone by, when the I bovine species was much hunted by beasts of prey, the genus ox lived in fear and trembling and, naturally, was warv of the open spaces where it would be subject to attacks by prowling carnivora. It adopted the plan, therefore, of hastily emerging from cover, gorging to repletion in as short a space J of time as possible and retiring to « cover again, where it could at leisure | j disgorge its meal and enjoy it without j { fear of interruption. 'l J Touching upon the question of diges--1 tive organs in snakes, the speaker recounted outrageous feats of gorging by I these reptiles which would appear to I prove that they had no digestive apparatus at all. A snake could quit© - easily swallow another snake and suffer apparently no unpleasant aftermath. A fish which came in for a lot of attention from Rotnrian Campbell was . the .John Dory, and a very interesting superstition concerning it was related. To aid it in stalking its prev, it had certain protective colouring in the form of a dark stripe along its side, I and fishermen, especially in Roman Ca« j tliolic countries, were wont to affirm that it. was a John Dory which the Apostle Peter took from the Sea of Gnlilee with the expectation of finding I tribute money (ore shekel) inside it. | Kotnriiin Campbell discounted this sup- j crstition by pointing out that, whereas ! the Sea of Galilee was composed of j fresh water, tlie John Dory was essentially a salt-water fish. Upon the conclusion of Rotarian Campbell's address the members sang ' a Rotary chorus which had a direct -j bearin.'T upon the haste displayed by all good Rotarians to be at their club at 12.H0, the words being set to the time- I honoured tune of "Three Blind Mice." { A vote of thanks was accorded Ro- { tnri:in Campbell for his interesting lec- | turette and the luncheon ended with j the National Anthem. i