PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3996, 14 October 1930, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

The nations of the world are viewing the disaster to RlOl with a dread sense of its significance. A whole countryside in mourning, with troops standing at the salute, and townsmen waiting bareheaded amid thunder and hail or filing past the black-draped Chapelle Ardente far into the night shows that France is giving military honours as to a great battle lost. Once again man has been repulsed by the forces of Nature cowering grim and determined behind their strong entrenchments. The battle has been lost, but the war still proceeds; for the assailants are indomitable, and under defeat they merely “reculent pour mieux sauter.” Historic and prehistoric time is a record of the endless campaign, and the centuries are strewn with the fallen on both sides. Fierce and vindictive Nature yields only step by step, position by position, ever coming back to deal a deadly blow at her triumphant enemy. Man sends out his scientists as scouts and spies to reconnoitre the camp of his crafty foe, and he laboriously pieces together the scanty information they bring back. But Nature’s secrets are

shrouded in mist, written in a language which Man can but obscurely tiecipher. The present disaster comes impressively and significantly at a momenl when Man, lord of the Earth and sea, had the mastery of the air almost within his grasp. Nature seems to be defending this, her third domain, with the energy of despair. Her back is to , the wall, and her return blows are deadly. Of the issue of the struggle there can be no doubt. It is the invincible against the apparently impreg liable. But in' the long record of such, contests both time and odds have always been on the side of the former.

As reported in the daily press, the Eugenics conference recently held between the Bradford wool-users and the New Zealand woolgrowers brought to light many mysteries obscure to the townsman. For the townsman’s knowledge of wool goes little further than his conviction that his suit is made of wool and that his boots aren’t. Staring us in the face out of the long report is the ineluctable conclusion that miscegenation has quite as dire effects on the human species as on the ovine. A few sentences from the report suffice:—

Woolgrowers arc crossing rams with ewes that lead nowhere. Crosses are being adopted in New Zealand that are giving irregular staple and irregular fibre. . . . There must be evenness of quality, the same thickness of hair from one end to the other. ... It shows what comes about from crossing with the Romney. . . . The form of the carcass and its suitability to the Smithfield market are of more importance to the majority of farmers than the irregular fibres of the fleece. , . . It is doubtful whether a dual purpose sheep has been evolved that will satisfy the wool-users as well as those who require mutton. Sir Frederic Aykroyd advocated passing a law prohibiting the importation of any ram without at least

eight generations pure-bred. That is to say, quality and birth will always tell. The bluer the blood the better the sheep, and the better the fibre. For all we know, among the millions of sheep on Earth, there may be an ovine Rousseau or Karl Marx bleating out his doctrine of sheep equality —that every sheep is as good as his neighbour, that Jack sheep is as good as his master, and that mutton is as good any day as fibre. If the sheep with eight quarterings of pure-bred aristocracy on his coat of arms is a prince among his species, equally princely is the man who has portraits of his Tudor ancestors lining his library walls. And if crossing of breeds for sordid profit be condemned in sheep, much more damnable is the mesalliance of the pureblooded human line with the wealthy heir or heiress. Says Galton:— Many able families have been extinguished by the “ taint of the heiress.” For the heiress is often the. last survivor of a poor and dwindling stock. Yes, both in men and in sheep miscegenation leads to weakening of the fibre. The best men and the best sheep arc those whose ancestors “ came over.”

Dear Givis, —One does not usually expect to find comic items in the Mercantile Gazette, published in the north. But in a late issue I see that somebody in Dunedin is domiciled in “ Mudpath Road.” There may be mudpaths in Dunedin, but, if so. why have we not had angry letters of protest to the edjtor, or deputations to the City Council, demanding the blood of the city engineer and councillors, with full reports in the next day’s press? Wrestling reports would be only dog fights in comparison.Knowing the street nomenclature of our town fairly intimately, I sug-

gest that the road is “ Neidpath.” In the hands of a careless writer who docs not dot his i’s and cross his t’s, this looks feasible. Or it may be that some practical joker up north, wishing to have a dig at the south, has seized his opportunity. I am not complaining In fact, I have to thank the careless writer or practical joker for a pleasant Saturday morning hour spent in solving this puzzle. Mudlark. Out of the long chain of suspects my correspondent issues a warrant for the arrest of the writer. What about his accomplices? Why ignore the guilt of the printer, of the proof-reader, of the oculist, of the teacher who taught the writer his handwriting, of the officetypist whose absence through after-ball fatigue has left the writer to do his own typing? And he does not explain how the careless defendant went so far as to write “ Neidpath ” as “ Mudpath ” instead of the equally or more likely “ Needpath ” or “ Neatpath.” Both of these species of path are as common as mud in Dunedin—the former when corporation disturbers are at work, the latter when they are not. Another culprit might be arraigned as eontributorily responsible for the “ mud ’’ —the Scottish love of strange vowels. Do we not hear of Councillor Wulson and his fush? Aye inun!

But in similar misreadings of careless manuscript I should let the printer off every time —and even without a caution. As a well-known American writer says, every author should be compelled to work for a time setting up type from miscellaneous manuscript. He will soon learn his lesson. You can’t expect a printer to be an encyclopedia—on Dunedin street Hames or on anything else. He cannot fairly be held responsible for the right spelling of “the perisome in the Brisingidae is coriaceous, and consists of an ectoderm of ciliated cuticle and a mesoderm of calcareous skeletal ossicula with a ciliated epithelium.” Some authors, according to facsimiles seen, write like a dying spider which has just emerged from an inkbottle. And some business men should be hanged, drawn, and quartered for their arrogantly illegible signatures. How often have I had in despair to cut out the signature from a letter and gum it on the replying envelope. Small wonder that a proof before this has come back from the printer with such a title as “ Memoirs of a Paint Brush,” where “ Memoirs of a Parish Priest ” was meant. More amazing still, the carelessness of many a writer’s writing is matched by his slipshod proof-reading of his own manuscript. Then do his chickens come home to roost. Even Burns did not escape the penalty of his errors—witness his lines in a cheap edition of his poems: O gin my love were yon red “ nose.” or again,

I’ll nail the self-conceited “ Scot ’ As dead’s a herrin’.

A nose and a rose are both red. But Scot and sot! Another unhappy poet was well-nigh ruined by a misprint: See the pale martyr “ with his shirt on fire.” He thought he had written “ in a sheet' of fire.” Who was the poet or poetess who, regretting the swift passing of the years, dreamt that My “ ears ” flow back and I am young again. A popular Christmas Book once wondered why young ladies who affect shyness at being kissed under the mistletoe, have no objection to being kissed under the “ nose.” And a well-known temperance novelist has placed on record the fact that “ Drunkenness is jolly.”

An experienced bushman writes to the editor of an Australian paper on the evergreen topic of moon and weather. A correspondent sends a cutting:—

Like many other men in the bush who find that one of their daily tasks is to forecast the weather, I am writing on what the average bushman thinks of the moon and its effect on weather. I am quite content to remain a moonshiner, not for the purpose of mocking at science, but because I think that science is not yet perfect. If scientists made Nature their chief objective better results would be obtained regarding weather forecasts. I believe the moon has as strong an influence on weather as on tides. I have just seen the new moon this evening, and am satisfied that the rainfall till the next new moon will be above the average. I am quite willing to give the moon month forecasts for twelve months—not -under my own name, as bushmen reali-ie that

scientists treat observation of Nature as a joke. These lunar, lunal, lunate, or lunatic enthusiasts are sometimes theorists, sometimes pure empiricists. Their theories are just as well founded as their observations. The full-moon clears away the clouds—there are moon-caused atmospheric tides just as there are oceanic tides —two full-moons in a month will cause a flood —the old moon in the arms of the new brings on rain—you should sow beans or cut down trees only in the wane of the moon—it is a bad sign if the moon changes on a Saturday or a Sunday—and so on. To treat the matter seriously, one has only to quote from one of these mocking-at-Nature scientists: The moon’s influence on the weather is negligible. The heat reaching us • from the moon would only affect our temperature by twelve-millionths of a degree; and the atmospheric tides caused by the moon would only affect the barometric pressure a few hundredths of an inch. The only connection between our own weather and the moon is the inconstancy of both. Says the old rhyme: The moon and the weather May change together ; But change of the moon Does not change the weather.

Two old-new school stories. Mr Gladstone, describing the Eton of his day, speaks of the first introduction of the new-fangled subject of mathematics into the school syllabus: — Mathematical teaching was looked upon as an innovation. The first mathematical master introduced into the school asked whether he was to wear cap and gown like the other masters.

“ That is as you please,” said the austere headmaster. “And are the boys to salute me as they salute the other masters? ” “ That is as they please,” was the frigid reply.

The famous Dr Busby, headmaster of Westminster in 1640, could name no fewer than sixteen bishops whom he had educated. Of one of these is told the following story:— A scholar of Dr Busby’s, coming into the parlour where the doctor had placed a fine bunch of grapes for his own eating, took it up, saying aloud, “ I publish the banns between these grapes and my mouth; and if anyone knows any just cause or impediment why these two should not be joined together, let him declare it.” The doctor, who overheard the words, ordered the boy to be “ horsed.” He then said, “ I publish the banns between my rod and this boy’s breech; if anyone knows any just cause or impediment why these two should not be joined together, let him declare it.” . “ I forbid the banns,” cried the boy. “Why so?” said the doctor. “ Because the parties are not agreed,” replied the boy.

The doctor, who loved to find readiness of wit in his scholars, ordered the boy

to be set down.

Civis.