DO YOU KNOW?

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3269, 7 March 1931, Page 3

DO YOU KNOW?

PLATITUDES THAT ARE TAKEN FOR GRANTED. The wor d is governed by cliches — the Seven "Wonders, the Seven Seas, the Four Estates, the Six Continents, the Four Dimensions and the Sixth Sense. It is irritating to some, perhaps, but how many can claim to know the objects that constitute these definitions ? Take, for instance, the Seven Wonders. Mr J. Wentworth Day, writing in the London Sunday Express, offers the necessary enlightenment in his own entertaining manner. They are: The Pyramids first, which in Egypt were laid; Then Babylon's Gardens for Amytis made; Third, Mausolus' Tomb of affection and guilt; v . Fourth, the Temple of Dian, m Ephesus built; ■ Fifth, Colossos of Rhodes, cast Sn brass to the sun; Sixth, Jupiter's Statue, by Phidias done; The Pharos of Egypt, last wonder ot old; Or the Palace of Cyrus, cemented with go d. And, for that matter, how many men—or women —in ten realise which precisely are the Seven Seas ? . Shall we say three in ten —perhaps ? They are the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, the North and South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Oceans. Yet if you ask the average man he will miss at least three of these, and almost certainly include the Mediterranean ! - Who would choose to probe the history .of the Four Estates, mighty though they are ? Take them in their accepted form—Lords spiritual, Lords temporal, the Commons, and, as Burke said in the House of Commons, pointing to the press gal.ery: " Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, more important than them all." Take these four and examine them, endeavour to understand a tithe of their history, and you will find yourself confronted with all the long, impressive scroll of human endeavour in law and learning, religion, and the recording of events. It is a story made of landmarks—Domesday Book and Magna Charta, Caxton and "No Popery," James I.'s Bible, and Lord Northcliffe, Cromwell, and the Parliament Act.

But what of the Four Dimensionslength, breadth, thickness, and that fourth elusive dimension of time which probably only Einstein can define or imagine. Here we are in the depth of a scientific bog, lost in the bewilderments of an intellectual mirage. It is a subject forbidding in its immensity, dull in its ponderousness, and dreadful in its implications. The riddle of the Six Continents is simpler —'Asia and Europe, Africa, North America and South America, Austarlia and Antarctica. That is the recognised geographical definition of the six--yet not one person in six realises that North and South America are two different continents; that Europe and Asia, strictly speaking, are but one; and that Antarctica is the largest and the highest, with an area of 16,370,000 square miles and an average height of 3200 feet. Australia is least in both area and height, with an area of 3,010,000 square miles and an t average height of only 800 feet. Europe is last but one, with 3,670,000 square miles and an average height of 940 feet. But history is dead, science is dull when you consider the infinite possibilities of the Five Senses—and'the fun in finding the Sixth. The sad thing is that each one of our senses is inevitably weakening as we become more civilised. Count the number of people in a train or an omnibus who wear spectacles ! Remember the men who are deaf; the men who need hot sauces and strong peppers before their food is worth eating; the people who cannot smell the scent of a rose until they put their noses into it. Yet only a few thousand years ago we had the sight of birds, the. noses of foxes, and the hearing of owls. A thrush will listen for a worm. A fox can smell a goose at half a mile. An antelope can see a man at many miles. An owl will hear 'the tiny footsteps of a mouse on soft earth. We could do these things once. Had we those ears to-day the wind in the trees would be a deafening roar, a distant train would sound like a battle, a policeman's footsteps would rival a stampede of elephants—and we would hear clearly the conversations of our neighbours in their houses ! Equally we should be so deafened and distracted by the ceaseless thunder of sound which is civilisation's contribution to the joys of living in great cities that we should go mad. The fifth sense, touch, has become so weakened that to-day only first-

class surgeons retain even its rudiments. When one considers how these senses have become weakened and atrophied it is no difficult thing t > be ; .eve that we once possessed a sixth sense—or even a seventh. As for the sixth sense, it may be anything. Psychic women claim it. People who discover bod.es in cellars by means cf dreams c aim it. Big game hunters who " sense " game at great distances are rivals for it. The inevitable crank who believes that he was a Pharaoh in Egypt, a pro-consul of Rome, a prince of Tudor England, and first cousin' to Paul Jones is a sixth sense believer.