HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17864, 4 June 1926, Page 8

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. An Old London Custom. Close by the Temple in London, a very old custom is still maintained; the burning of a light in the hall of one of the houses all through the night when everyone else is in bed. The light marks an ancient privilege and a bygone right of way. It is maintained by the Westminster Council, and not by the tenant of the house. The lamplighter enters at twelve and kindles the light, and on his round in the early morning he re-enters with a latch key and extinguishes it. The light is the remaining symbol of a right of way formerly enjoyed by residents in a small street, giving them the power of proceeding to a spring of water in thd basement of the particular house, which was at one time their sole water supply. Will It Be Weft? ** Most of the old weather sayings are based on the experiences over many generations of outdoor men. to whom the weather means much. It is therefore foolish to cKsmiss them as superstition. A common belief is that a plentiful supply of berries on the blackthorn and the holly presages a hard winter. The shrubs flourish Vest in a wet summer, which summer a'most always precedes a cold winter, because the excessive evaporation takes up much heat from the earth. The popular belief about the berries really, 1 therefore, has a little scientific truth behind it. The same applies to the oak, which, if it bear much hast, is supposed xo predict a long ana hard winter. When the leaves^wither on the trees and are long in fating, and we have a specially fine display of autumn colours, provide a,stock of all-wool underclothing! It i: going to be cold. Another saying of the farmer is this: “When onion skin is thick and tough, Coming winter cold aid rough.” There is one weathei saying that is quite a delusion —that, the moon on her back is a sign of wet weather. The position in which we ste the moon's horns depends entirely oi her distance from the sun. and has rothing to do with the weather. Three hundred years ago. Lord Bacon thought that “ a serme autumn denotes a windy winter: a .vindv winter, a rainy spring, a raijifV spring, a serene summer: a serene iummer. a windy autumn.” The Violin’s Varying Moods. It is an old saying that a tffiroughlv healthy person is “ fit as a fidde.” and, like many other old sayings, it contains an essential fallacy. The health of a violin, or any other instrument of music, varies considerably, according to circumstances, and every player will tell you that there are days wh*n his instrument fails to respond to h's demands, often just when -he himself is at his best. And the violin, in particular, is a delicate instrument that requires to be wrapped in silk or some other fine dry material to prevent it getting cold or being seriously affected by the heat. It will become almost seriously indisposed in the course of an hour when being played in a hot room: it gets tired and out of sorts if it is played too continuously or too strenuously. Good violinists prefer to have at least two reliable instruments, because they know that holidays are necessary for the fiddles as for themselves, and sometimes just when tkey are busiest one of the fiddles g?ts overworked, and must have a few days off. Keep “ fit as a fiddle ” if you can; but most of us wish to be fitter than a fiddle. A Universal Survey. Mr J. L. Garvin, editor of the London “Observer,” has consented to act as editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In giving his reasons for undertaking this heavy addition to his responsibilities, Mr Garvin said:—“lt is impossible to describe shortly all my plans for making the Encyclopaedia Britannica a more complete and a plainer clue to the mighty maze. But, above all, I aim at making it a work of intellectual co-operation between distinguished scholars and experts of all kinds in many countries; and the deliberate design is to restore the international unity in these matters which was broken by the war and has remained too long and widely interrupted in the peace. In the sphere of knowledge no national prejudices can be allowed to exist, for all nations help to accumulate what may be called the common stock of civilisation. Y\ hu drives fat oxen need not himself be fat, and no single person taking part in an undertaking like this can pretend to be a living encyclopaedia. Nothing of the kind. Every moment's association with the organising of such a universal survey, and with the specialists enlisted to complete it, is a lesson in humbleness. The new volumes will be the co-ordinated work of a thousand minds.” Exploring the Polar Regions. “ In discussing Polar exploration one is often asked the same old question What good does it do? Why should men risk their lives simply in order to fill in on the map those white patches of valueless frozen land and sea?” says Dr Fridtjof Nansen, in the “ Forum.” " Yet the mere fact that these regions form a part still unknown of the surface of our world is enough to make it impossible for us to rest until we have explored them. A fundamental characteristic of human nature is that the unknown, in whatever form, has an irresistible attraction for us, especially when it concerns the world in which we live. Furthermore, it is precisely the fact of these polar regions being so cold and frozen and barren that makes their exploration of such importance. The physical con ditions there, with the long summer day and the long winter night, are so different from those familiar to us in every other part of the world and exercise such a strong influence upon them, that it becomes a matter of paramount importance for our understanding of the physics of the whole globe that we should gain the fullest possible knowledge of the areas near the poles.”