CHILDRENS' SECTION

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16923, 23 December 1922, Page 4

CHILDRENS' SECTION

MIGNONETTE IN WINTER. If you have a little greenhouse tv sonsei vatory, no matter how small i. may lx?, 3-011 may use it in a numbei >f ways to give you an abundance o’ lowers when the outside garden is most y cold and bore. Sweet mignonette, For instance, is always a favourite i? English gardens, oven when its fragrant flowers come in the height oi summer; but hew much more weleoim it is when the ground is covered with snow* ! 7’ho best way to grow mignonette for winter flowering in the conservatory is to sow the seed thickly in small pots, afterward thinning out all the little plants except throe. These three later on may all be transplanted to get her into a five-inch pot, which the; will quickly fill with a mass of their sweet-scented flowers. A good sort o’ mignonette for winter-flowering in poiv is the variety known as Covent Garde:; Favourite. Another attractive little plant for growing in a small c -c* =. the butterfly-flower, or schizanthus. and one of the best sorts is that called by the long name of Wisetonensis. If you sow the seed of thin in the greenhouse during early autumn, thinning out carefully when the little plants arc large enough to handle, they will give you huge masses of the daintiest flowers in early spring. Three or four ol the seedlings are quite sufficient for r. six-inch pot. because the plants ere of a pretty branching habit, with 0. graceful fern-like foliage. Schizanthus always thrives best in a light, sandy soil and it is a good plan to mix a littlesilver sand into the earth used for the potting. TTIE LEMMINGS. The lemmings are near relatives of the short-tailed field mouse. They are about five inches long, and have round heads, brown fur. and bright, shining eyes. They live in the highlands of the great central mountain chain of Sweden and Norway, where their nests are built of grass. 'They are spirited, courageous little fellows, well able to defend their rights and to look out for themselves. But the remarkable thing about these animals is this: Every five, ten or twenty years they all of a sudden become possessed of an idea to see foreign lands I All of them seem to have the same idea at the same moment. Thereupon t-hev one and all leave their settlements and. start out in armies of tens of thousands, overrun the cultivated tracts of land in both Norway

and Sweden and inarch forward, de- J rouring the vegetation as they go. i They travel only at night, going on in me straight course, allowing nothing I :t> interfere with them. -As they go, j hey gain new recruits constantly. Kir- j era are swum, and hills arc crossed : until, wfc last, the Atlantic Ocean or ! ,:ho Gulf of Bothnia is reached. Then, | what do you think they do? They j plunge straight into the son and swim •out as far as they can go! It sometimes takes this indomitnl-*!© | army three years to reach the sea. A\ hy they go is still an unexplained problem. Other animals migrate in somewhat the same way as the lemmings. But it is usurdlv after a drought or because of the failure of their favourite crops j •.vhich prompts them to seek new enun•ries and better food conditions. In be province of Parana the | rats are said to take up their march j about once in every thirty years, ov- j ing to the lack of bamboo, upon the ! seeds of which they feed. But no such reason, apparently, causes the lemmings ; to march to the sea ! THE LANGUAGES AYE SPEAK. How splendid it would be if there could be only one and the same language spoken all over the world, called 11 things by the same names arri used the same expressions ot speecn Flicn boys and girls would not hare* my languages to learn in their sehou. lays. and. when we travel, we shou'i nave no difficulty in making ourselves understood in a foreign country and m asking for the things we want. At. present, in planning a tour abroad, it sometimes happens that one positively decides not to go to one particular country or another because of vtoi knowing the language. From time to time people have tried to invent a new language, an easy one. and one that everybody all over the world should learn, in addition to his own native language, so that wherever he happened to go there would always be someone who could understand whathe said. It would be quite impossible for any one person ever to learn all the languages in the world, no matter how hard he worked or how young he was when he began. There are too manv o f them. In India alone there ar 1 * 147. because the people of India are of so many different races and nationalities. Nor it is only large countries that have a language of their own, for in many, not at all large islands the inhabitants speak quite a

| different tongue to that spoken by f i people living ui other islands not far 1 ! a way. Sometimes it happens, to, j • that more than one language is spoken i ) in one country. Indeed, once upon j I a time in England there were ilirte j J The King and his courtiers and the j nobles spoke French. The laboun ig I ; classes spoke English, and learned t I people, everybody connected with th_> I church and the law, spoke Latin; an! ; all legal documents and charters wer.i written in Latin. Souio people spoke ali three and almost everybody spoke i two. Gradually Latin and French vanished and English only remained, i but many words of both languages are j still retained with it. : Perhaps you may have heard of j dead ” languages. They are call-?.! that because no one speaks them no r. the nations they belonged to having I either vanished or been broken up an J 1 become part of other nations. Manv | of them are quite forgotten, but there j ore a few. ancient Greek is one and i I atin another, which are studied for the sake of the books which the ; ancient people who spoke them wrot* and which are, in some instances, better than any books that have ever been written since. Even now it fa useful to know Latin, because so many modern languages were founded upon it. ami so it sometimes happens that people who do not know epeh other's languages con converse if they happen to know. Latin. There is a funn7 story told of a dispute taking pla-o in which four men were concerned, o Spaniard, a Greek, an Italian an! a Moroccan State Official, none of whom could speak any language bus 1 his own. Then an Englishman came - along who know Latin well : he man- | aged t-o explain matters to all of them and it all ended satisfactorily. Latin was for a long time, many I centuries, the principal language in | Europe. After its disappearance, 1 French took its place, especially in | international discussions. Ambassa- | dors of different foreign countries 1 j generally spoke French, when they 1 met to arrange a treaty or settle anv matter which concerned their own countries. Spanish and Italian are both beautiful languages, but they • have never been much spoken outside the boundaries of their own countries, as has been the case with English and French. Perhaps the best- plan will be for all peoples to learn English, > which is more and more widely understood. THE LAND OF FAR AWAY. • If you go straight through the field i of the daffodils you will come to the

long lane that is always in the twilight. You must not loiter in that lane, because of the Golubberlies. They are a bad little folk with long fingers that hurt. Do not arguo about it, but go on quickly, till you see a wicket gate at the end of the lane. And by the gate you will see a sturdy boy doing sentry. That is Jonathan Jollick. And he stands there to keep the Golubberlies out of the Land of Far Away. And they gibe and gibber and gurgulate at him, lolling out their tongues and booking their noses. And all this is to drive him from the gate, so that they may go in and take pos session of the Land of Far Away. In the second castle on the right lives Jonathan Jollick’s great-grandmother. The next castle is empty. It was built by a Baron, who took to making bells, and they toll very strangely. Hark! do you hear? No. no; it :s not the bells! It is the Golubberlies coming to attack. They are coming lu thousands. Quick! To the gate! Jonathan Jollick will be hard pressed. Ah. the King has ordered the people to go to his rescue. They come up there, all I along the battlements; they are load- ! ing the cannons with tapioca. It will be a great fight. Oh, you need not be frightened! So long as there is even one girl or boy who will stand beside Jonathan Jollick. the Golubberlies will always be beaten back from the Land of Far Away. SWINGING! Oh. Teddy and I have the finest fun — 1 swing Teddy and he swings me— In the big green meadow away from the sun, On the bough of a chestnut tree. It’s your turn, darling, swing low, swing high, Don’t be frightened, but hold on fast! J You shall fly right up in the wide blue sky. Where the little white clouds float past l “And just for a minute you'll see below The big, big world all flowery and green; Then, down through the branches again you’ll go And tell me of all you’re seen.** Oh. isn’t it lovely to Bwing all day On a long, low bough of the chestnut tree! High up in the blossoms and leaves to sway— Just my Teddy and me!