CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1934, Page 14 (Supplement)

CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

DEFLATED “MONSTER” THE MYSTERY OF LOCH NESS. OPINION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN. (Special Correspondent). London, Oct. 11. I am not surprised to read that scientific men, after studying the photographs of the Loch Ness “monster,” have reached the conclusion that it is probably nothing more than a grey seal. A similar opinion was expressed to me some months ago by a public man connected with the locality and able to share Highland fondness for pulling the Lowland leg. He was anxious that the mystery should remain one, since it was proving a lucrative attraction to the district. In point of fact Loch Ness needs no such artificial aids. It is one of the most beautiful scenes in the British islands and now that it has been made more accessible by the new motor road which the Transport Minister opened the other’ day—it has cost the road fund about two millions—the number of its visitors should increase. But the owners of fishing on the Loch would prefer the absence to the presence of the grey seal, which is exceedingly destructive to salmon. . Nature’s Economy.

As sequel to a request for information how to destroy wasp nests, we have had a lively discussion on the merits of those decorative but hot-head-ed pests. To the undisguised disgust of the wasp-killeto it has been argued, by unimpeachable experts, that the wasp fulfils a most useful function. As a matter of fact nature rarely wastes her creative energies. The wasp nqay be a great nuisance to picnicers, and a menace to unwary beekeepers, but he is a close coadjutor of the farmer and gardener. To the wholesale destruction of wasp nests—a very different thing from slaying individual wasps—is attributed the serious troubles that farmers have lately encountered with insect pests, notably caterpillars, against whom the wasp wages perpetual war. Science and sanitation may have rendered the rate superftuous, but the wasp is still, so the best authorities swear, doing his bit in the big scheme of creation. Seasonal Signs. To the habitual Londoner the signs and the portents of the changing year are just as plain and unmistakable in the city as in the country. Village gossips note the first symptoms of burgeoning woods and hedges, and know that spring is at hand. The ripening of the berries and the first fall of the fading leaves mean that autumn draws near. Omens no less significant or sure are noted by the city banker and stockbroker. When the town develops an epidemic of painters’ pots . and ladders, and the evening- paper bills begin to take an interest in flat racing, they realise that the boat race will soon herald spring. When the suburbs are smoking with the funeral pyres of garden rubbish, and the chemists’ windows display influenza cures, they are sorrowfully aware that another winter lies just ahead. This autumn the latter portents are in more ominous evidence than usual. They have come even before the seaside brown has quite faded from the typists’ still stockingless legs. It looks like being a hard winter. Dug-Out Memory. ' My last experience of French and Belgian paper money was in 1918. A battalion of the Ox and Bucks was alongside my own at Locon, and I was inveigled into playing pontoon in the N.C.O.’s dug-out. They cleaned me out. Two nights later, having drawn arrears of pay, I returned to the attack, and, having more experience of pontoon and much better luck, managed' to clean them out. Two days later I was a stretcher case, ■ arid eventually landed, with an amazing collection of Ox and Bucks paper money, in the first Scottish General Military Hospital. One morning the padre, a splendid old fellow devoted to wounded Tommies or Jocks, but a strong anti-gambler, came round the ward, and offered to change into honest English money any foreign notes. I produced my museum specimens, and the padre, ■gingerly counting these filthy souvenirs, handed over nearly £lO. He congratulated me, at the same time, on so carefully “saving up my pay!” Eureka! Probably there will never be an end to human invention until some inspired genius discovers how to blow up the globe. There was a time when Cockney journalism suspected the explosion of the atom, now safely achieved, might accomplish this final boon. But after a visit to the Central Hall, to see the innumerable new ideas and queer gadgets at the Intemational Exhibition of Inventions, one is amazed how much mortal ingenuity goes to tiny details. Mountains of cogitation produce a mouse in the form of an unbreakable collar stud, for instance. Obviously the field of invention resembles pearl-fishing in an oyster bed. Only once in a blue moon do.es the. fisher for bright ideas bring up a really valuable gem. One gadget at the' Central Hall, however, did take my fancy. I have felt the need for yiars of -that patent . pocket ash-tray. That/to my.mind, beats even the patent-egg-topper. Sir Henry Page-Croft Sir Henry Page-Croft is naturally delighted that, on his inrition about, India, he came so near to defeating the official party, at the Conservative Conference. Though he has been in the House of Commons for nearly _ a quarter of a century, h e retains a certain charming ingenuousness, which prevents him from distinguishing between a winning and a losing cause. As in his rowing days when he was a member of the Cambridge crew, the result is of less importance to him than the race, and he is one of those happy politicians who are never disturbed by any doubt whether they are in the right. To say that he is a pOwer in Parliamentary debate would be difficult, but he is an attractive figure on party platforms, .and in the House he is liked by every one for his cheery good humour and his obvious Sincerity. New Lord of Appeal. Opinion at the Bai- seems well disposed towards Sir Alexander Roche's appointment as the new Lord Justice of Appeal. There is also keen interest in the same quarter as to who will be chosen to fill the vacancy thus created on the King’s Bench. Sir Alexander is sixty-three, and must have been one of the late Lord Birkenhead’s contemporaries at Wadham College in his Oxford days. Even nowadays he is still a keen hunting man, used to seize every chance to indulge his hobby when on circuit, arid is a fairly regular figure with the Heythrop, whose hunting ground is close to Sir Alexander’s country residence at Charlbury. The new lord of appeal is a keen lawyer, with a very methodical habit of swotting up al! cases that come before him in advance. The result is that eminent counsel engaged in the case find themselves sharply pulled up if they indulge in any legal irrelevancies. “Please confine yourself to the point” is Sir Alexander’s judicial slogan. He should help to get our legal arrears rapidly reduced.