THE EXHIBITION AS I SEE IT

Otago Witness, Issue 3763, 27 April 1926, Page 37

THE EXHIBITION AS I SEE IT

BEES AND DISEASES. (By Josephine O’ Nbill). (Fob thi Witness.) Since the end of the Exhibition is close at hand, over all Dunedin is clouding the uneasy sense that there is something, there must be something, that has been missed. There is a hasty bolting of odds and ends, as of the working breakfast, with one eye on the clock. Being of such a mind I resolutely set my face to the Government Pavilion, of whose various maze I had only the vaguest agricultural impression. _ , ... I came through the Fijian Court, which is becoming bare of wall and rough with packing cases, and went to see the bees. On the one occasion 1 had observed them before, placed as they are in a glass case, with one lengthy oxit to the open air, the thick, crawling mass of life, a yeasty surve of brown bodies, had appalled me. To-day, a group cf countrymen, on the principle of a busmans holiday, were deep m examination. “Aye,’’ said one familiar, “there’s the Queen.” I stared, but no gleam of golden crown leapt up. Curiosity overcame town silence. “Where?” I blurted. “There—look—under the other bee. Now she’s coming out. There!” She was bigger than the rest, certainly, and of a tapering body, but that anyone could pick one bee out of these millions seemed a miracle. The weather-browned countryman went on talking. “There—she is laying an egg. Watch her twist round to fasten it firmly to the bottom of the cell. Aye, she’s getting old, she moves slowly.” The patient, quiet voice made my exotic whimsies seem rather futile. Suddenly, scaling up the glass, came one bee, dangling another by a leg. “And that’s a scavenger. He’s trying to take that dead bee out; thev never let the dead bodies 1* and rot. But he'll never do it.” The scavenger just reached the crowd about the upper cells, and was forced to drop his burden. They fell to the bottom, where the worn-out body collapsed, and the scavenger crawled away in desperate haste. I hung over the rail, fascinated: and when I looked again for the countryman of infinite tolerance and knowledge he was gene. A pyramid of jars and bottles, that six-months familiar sight, stood within the horticultural section. A closer survey showed it an exhibit, among other less interesting bee products, of honey. There was honey from Australia, golden stuff, and then honey from Fiji, whose darkbrown colour and tropic richness here out the text that all henies are good, but vary in flavour and colour according to the flowers from which they are gathered. I was becoming poetical about the luxuriant flora of tropic isles when I came upon a jar of equal darkness, and labelled “Russian.” Pretty fancies crushed. But honey from rata blossoms, delicate pale and transparent, amber stuff from kamahi blooms, and a smooth, creamy deposit from clover were flower-like enough to divert me. A model homestead, set in severe sweeps of lawn and stately trees, was placed as an example in the middle of the section. I was reading notices which advised me to plant suitable vegetables, to have playing greens, to abolish paths and walks, when the amazing lifelike look of the trees struck me. These were no planted pine twigs, but lush, swelling giants. “Don’t touch,” screamed a placard. I deliberately bent and pinched. Really the height of ingeniousness. They were dyed sponge. But potatoes and onions had to be studied, a drv education, although names like “Pukekohe Brown Spanish” were intriguing. Nearby were some interesting little test tubes, containing twigs, leaves, bark. But some of them were distorted, and others of strange growths. No wonder, for they were unfortunate diseases. I wandered round to the next section. It was worse—much worse. One half was devoted to plant life, photographs and diagrams, all of peculiarities. I passed it and turned to the other half, where were cases upon cases of glass jars on glass shelves, and each was the repository of some part of a pickled animal—of veterinary interest. At the top of each case, to add a little touch of decoration, was a pot plant, carefully flanked by skulls. Yet a morbid fascination dragged me from shelf to shelf until the end. I noticed a virile, red-cheeked young man staring as if hypnotised at an array of bones. Now, l could understand something of the psychology of a crowd, which, individually humanitarian, gloats at the sight of an accident.

Thi would not do. I tore mvself away, and went for diversion to piggeries, model piggeries, where pigs and piglings gambolled on sward before spotless houses shaded by trees, or, in a more intensive type, were housed in edifices, each with a front yard, and an individual door. One pig was wandering down to the back entrance. It was to be further amused that I came to the poultry. But my first glimpse was of glass jars; and I went on. Enclosed in walls whose friezes were of dancing the Dominion Museum is filled with curios. Perhaps the most wonderful were feathered capes, of stiff kiwi quills, and layer upon infinite layer of soft brilliance, pigeon feathers, as fresh and rich as if tney were but plucked. Here was one in which parrot feathers were intermingled, that appeared as gold and red brocade. A cursory glance at panels painted in grey, black, and scarlet showed them of conventional design. But a name caught my eye. then another; and each was of deep symbolism —“Falling Rain,” “The Starry Heavens,” ‘Tears of the Albatross/’—as peculiar to

the Native race as the beaded flax dancing kilts. I went by the Department of Public Hygiene and looked at models of model farms, model houses, model babies, model meals. With a civic zeal for reform I walked round a corner—and saw more diseases! My survey of the Government. Pavilion was finished. Out I walked, past the golden cow, the statistics, the deer, the cinema with stony inattention. I stood on the steps, and watched tho Grand Court, bleak in the watery light. All colour was dimmed to a monotonesave the scarlet of Flanders poppies, which flecked the quiet crowds like crimso- rain. The impermanence of it all suddenly oppressed me. In another fortnight we, who had seen the first joists planted in the sucking mud, would see this bright and brief existence, this world set in light and flowers, disappear. There was an air of melancholy over the buildings, as if, dull in the fading dav, the chill of decay was upon them. The fog drifted swifter and swifter over the dun hills; and rain commenced to fall.