LOCAL GOSSIP

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21467, 15 April 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP

BY JIEBCUTIO

It was suggested in a paragraph Inst week that rhymsters who used to write verses about J. B. Hobbs would find their task harder if they tried to substitute W. 11. Hammond, who is now in the limelight as England's greatest batsman. A correspondent seems to have scented a challenge to find a rhyme for Hammond. Ho subputs the following: How can bowlers Get rid of Hammond If he refuses to be gnmmon'd? In a footnote the rhymster adds: "As the dictionary defines the verb 'to gammon ' as to hoax, humbug or impose on, I think it appropriately describes the modus operandi apparently necessary to get W. 11. H.'s wicket." This is very nice and very ingenious, and is fully appreciated, though thero was no intention of challenging anybody to find such rhymes. It is a dangerous business doing anything of the kind, for there are many people fertile in resource about, and the result may be a flood of replies that makes the challenger feel a stupid, ignorant fellow not to have thought of any of the rhymes for himself. Probably he is, but that does not make the demonstration any pleasanter. A classic example of the response to the challenge was supplied by a man well known in the London theatrical world. When the Empire Exhibition was held some years ago it was remarked that the poets would have their style cramped because there was no word rhyming with Wembley. The man in question speedily produced the following jingle, done in Cockney jftyle: When the Exhibish opens at "Wembley I'll be theie with the 'olo of me fembly. There's the missus and me And our kids—we've got three, . 'Any, young Alf and Morel Embley. " Degrees in Theology " is a news leadline calculated to arrest the eye. Examination of what appeared uuder it showed that the University of New Zealand was simply being asked to examine students of theology to establish .their academic qualifications. There is no question of degrees of. piety in,volved, which is a good thing in these flays of controversy. The cuckoo's egg which has lain in Ihe Wellington Museum for sixty years is under suspicion. Not of course in the same sense as the curate's famous egg. No. The egg lost all its usefulness exoept as an exhibit when it was " blown." The trouble seems to have been that some farmyard pullet impersonated the cuckoo, in which case we must consider the possibility of a pullet in the nest of the bird tho cuckoo honoured. It is very distressing, of course, to think that for sixty years the visitors to the Wellington Museum have been misled by this egg. Probably quite a dozen have gazed at it with rapture. Mr. Stead handed the authorities a very unsatisfactory Easter egg .when he. raised the doubt. Here is a story sent frpm a suburban 'district not far from this city. A certain piece of street improvement work has been in progress —or not in progress, as the caso may be —as p, relief scheme. Residents in the neighbourhood have made many remarks about the rate at which the undertaking has travelled toward completion, some perhaps foing so far as to wonder if it would e finished this side of next century. People will say these things. Anyway, the other clay, while work was proceeding at its usual hectic rate, a patient horse in the employ of the local authority, which had been on the job clay after day, harnessed to a cart—the horse, riot the Jocal body—dropped dead suddenly and without warning. That's all; there is no moral attached to the story as supplied, . unless it be bv implication that it's the pace that kills. From faraway Canterbury there fcomes a note of gentle reproach, pennrd by a careful student of the daily press who has detected in a speech by'the Prime Minister a grievous mis-quotation, or rather, an assignment of the right words to, the Wrong man. Mr. Forbes, it seems, credited Warren Hastings with having said "I am astonished at my own moderation," whereas "the writer of the reproachful letter remarks that it was Clive who used these words, and cites Macaulay as his authority. He does hot, however, reproach the Prime Minister for having made this slip, but Mercutio for having failed to note it and reprove the delinquent suitably. This is very flattering. To be regarded rs the mentor of Prime Ministers must be flattering to anyone so conscious of his own imperfections as Mercutio is. To be credited with unsleeping vigilance in' this fashion has its appeal also. Therefore, it seems a poor excuse to plead that one did not even Uotice the passage in Mr. Forbes' speech attributing to Warren Hastings what Clive said. It happens to be so With Mercutio; consequently, if the Prime Minister had credited even Josh Billings with tho epigram, he would not have been excoriated in this Column. The poor excuse must therefore serve. And, beyond the undoubtedly flattering implications of tho correspondent's reproach, it adds a new terror to life. If in addition to pillorying Prime Ministers for their cheerful breaks in logic and the like one is expected to keep an eye on their literary references, life will indeed become hard. Scientific folk and even people more huidly concerned in these things will bo much interested in the wonderful fetnok of moa bones found not so far from Wanganui. There need be no reservations about stocking museums With moa specimens, because tho poor things are already dead. They need not bo killed first. It may have been inconsiderate of them to have become extinct before the sportsman armed With gun or rifle arrived to shoot them flown; but thev did it, and there's an fend of it. Now that the bones have been found in mud springs, the question naturally arises—why in mud Springs? What is thero in a mud spring to attract moas? Mud there is, of course, but was there any special affinity between moas and mud? Nobody 'knows. Since bones arc often so<ind in swamps there may have been; btit hones are also found in dry caves, and the two sets of facts simply don't .agree. Someone has asked why the bones of defunct moas arc so often found in caves and swamps. The answer is easy. Because that is where tho Creatures died. Why they went there and died there is another story. There is, of course, the possibility that they took refuge from " fire in the fern," .perhaps set alight by hunters, and perishing none the less have remained so that their bones are now discovered. There is a great deal of mystery about the moa anyway, and that of his apparent partiality for both swamps and Caves as last resting places can bo placed alongside the rest.