COUNTRY NOTES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12765, 19 June 1911, Page 3

COUNTRY NOTES.

(Fy Our Own Correspondent )

On a county road the other day we j were discussing savage man and pres- . ent day man. There was a sportsman in the distance with his choice bore arid his? dog. The dog knew tittle- about the country, tho" man less; tli3 latter • could not shoot straight, and, therefore, he very soon filled his bag. He had had a good day's spo/fc—such as sport is called nowadays. He was su- j premely happy, and for months the i ""remembrance of' the day will remain i with him. He*will have something to talk about to his friends at the break-fast-table and dinner-table will be for weeks an endless source of joy to his wife and children and to his fellow lodgers. Killing, not for:food f) r necessity, but for pure pleasur?. Is j resent day man superior to th> savage? Yes, in house and clothing ana in several of the adjuncts of life, and perhaps in speech and in manners and deportment. Not in the elements wlncn go to make up real nobility of natura. In the motives and bent of his mind he is very inferior to the fa/age. Come now, what are you giving u<? My two friends, flicked ran with their intellectual whips, and told Tie to consider myself properly horsewhippo-1. We finished our work, and in tiie evening after tea I started talking to myself. They were smoking. 1 war* cutting up my tobacco. Now, sonny, says I to myself, that townsman .started Avith gold—ha-d cash. The gun cost him £1.0, and after a few weeks' practice he <;ouid knock over a clay pigeon. The dog vas picked up for a fiver, and his game ticenso cost him\£l, and a few tots of whisky gave him the- run of broad I acres, and tbat's about all that can-} bo said, sonny. "Horray!" shouted my chums, "Light your pipe, old man! ! mean to enlighten you first, i? you cunt mind. You gave me a propiv** dressing- . down, nnd I've felt small over since. Ibu need not listen! I'm going to enlighten myself. I only spolco in parody. Well, sonny, the savage sta-ced without capital! He had to exercise his brain and his body on the muuufacniro of his implements of the cha-sr, Tlion for weary months and years li.> ha] to ]>ractice to make himself perfect in their u^e He hadn't Bate's to tt-11 him what kind of a day' to-day or to-mor-row was going to turn out. He had to acquire by patient study and observation of sun., sky, cload. bird, and dew-drop as to what the weather was going to be for his hunting expeditions ■ "' -

Th-n. ronny, for years he I-ad been on thv> .hunting-school, fpniij.find hod had-to puss the various standar-ls oi ivoodcraft, birdoraffc, animal cj-&ft, fishcraft, hill-craft, and flat laad-cr.ift. Ho had to study the haunts and habits of the quarry, where it was fou.id at niorning, noon, or night; whore if was 11 sunshine or cloudy sky; its fleetness of foot, or its speed, on the wing, and the windage had to be calculated ar. well as the exact angle of its pus siblo deflection when the misnv-j sped towards it. -

I went on at '"this rate for an hour, -so my friends said, but to me it only seemed five minutes. They Lad ceaso*. fmoking, and 'were gaping,' eyes mouth and ears. Then when I openod out on the moral aspect of the comparison and laid bare the motives lying at the fountain-springs of the savage man aud tfo. modern man, they ?>oth in unison softly said, "Dear old ma:e, wc.-m-vor knew you till now."

"Really mates," said.'l, "I never knew if myself till now;/but.f;ince.Von dressed me down tips afte'.nr.r,n I've done some hard thinking, and that's tho result. I; am .going "to wash, the dishes, and then I'll have rjiy .snioko. :> (i '"Deed you are not,'' X-iid tins, you light up now, and fmte'eut youi* notes, and we'll wash up and do a bit o' fire-nvood chopping ii. tho mvaiihght."

It's very good of Mr Bates to save us the trouble of looking at the «ky, tho clouds, the birds, arid the beetle-*, for our signs of the weather for the day. It may give us more time to work and make money, and more tima to work and make money, and moro leisure io get some other body to amuse us. How few of us nowaday-* understand the high and glorious privilege of amusing and instructing ourseu'es.

Sun. sky, cloud, moon, star, sea, hill and vale are all seers of the weather like Mr Bates. Did it ever strike you how full of re-creative life,xinoveiiient and change. The sky is, or, if you like, atmosnhere. We think of man and animals getting their daily food from the earth; we might with the same breath say that the earth gets its daily broad from the sky. Who should be dull with the sky overhead? Scientist, animal, bird, and insoct all take their weather prognostications from the sky. Primitive 'man —the man we despise as being a poor, ignorant savage—was/ infinitely blither in the scale of knowledge of the sky than we are to-day. I am not so sure that his gods were, as far out of the «7c.-tual as" some think.

The savage could almost divine the weather for the next 12 or 21 hours by the curling or swirling of the smoke from his breakfast fire. Think of a

townsman going outside to read tho weather in tho smoke which had escaped from under his flounder or his liam and eggs. Tho housefly you so much detest is full of interesting ways, other than sipping your tea-table sugar, or by forgetting himself in testing tho specific gravity of tho Westmere or tho Kaitoke milk. The character of the dew on the lawn or the wonderful webs of night-working spiders on 'your geraniums or rose-bushes are in some

respects quite as trustworthy as Mr Rate's, as to what gown you may wear or what bonnet you may deck or crown your head with for the day. Certain sea-birds flying in a particular way presage a. storm to the sailor, and when they wing their flight over bush and

brake look out for

your windows and

your chimney-pots. The despised woodl;en is a splendid weather prophet when you get to know his ways—or her

nays. To you they may not scorn to live in wedlock. liet me toll you they never vet disgraced themselves. They may fight it out. but never —no, never —do they wash their dirty linen in public. The coming of wind is foretold by the demonstrations of the common hawk or harrier in the sky. The darling little fantail, so beloved b> cats and not unknown io boys with r-oa-rifles, i;: one of the mast reliable of the weather prophets. Had I painters' ink I could tell you some nice little stories of the fluttering, wing-twinkling fantail. But why get me to do your thinking and your study and your observations! Why should I rob you of such a charming pleasure? Truly the bondage ot" the town is great. Yes, I Vhotv it has many advantages, and I love it. and 1 am not such a fool as to cry stinking fish when I want you so imieh io buy my wares, without money and without price. Only effort of mind, concentration of your GodA'iven intelligence is all I ask you to •«nd me. Was I very hard on a phase of your town-life last week? Some, I know, called Jt rubbish; others praised i+ and said it was a "nature study." One who spoke of it in unmeasured terms of condemnation was reading a love-tale—the scene located in the Kentucky mountains. Why don't he write .1 nico love-story like this, or give us descriptions of the- things ho saw at Hell's Gates. "You silly girl," said her mate, "He's describing life under your very nose; he's lifting the look-

ing-glass on your dressing-room table." What are newspapers for if they are not to deal with the hops arid the skips and ihe jumps of those who live next door to us? America's all right, but it would be a good deal better for us all if we looked into our own daily and weekly doings on our own doorsteps—and," so to speak, kept the street clean in front of our own doors. Do you follow what I mean? I don't really mean that you should sweep the street, but you -should take some little less interest in: American street sweepers and a little more in the persons who are sweeping our own streets. I must not be too personal or pointed, but that's a sort of threading your needle. Just yon go and sew now!

"Thanks very much," said the.lady, of the house, as T handed her "my luncheon kit full of mushrooms. '"'That shows the mildness of the season," was her next remark as she tenderly laid them one by one on to a large I Jate. She's a dainty, educated woman - —very different from the i-ough West Highland savage who, in" my boyhood, used to grow the duke's mushrooms m the cold of early winter in an old sodhouse. Many a time have I risked a birching to^help the old fellow with his handcart, "loaded with fresh stable manure, wherewith he used to make up his spawn beds. He had found put —like the fairies—the secrets of the fungi He communicated the secret to .me. I would, lose my billet as yotir correspondent if I gave it in unadulterated Gaelic. In roundabout English ifc ran: If she's got the heat in her heart she'll not want the blanket on her skin. During the past ,warm summer tho loamy turf of our meadows has been storing up the sun's caloric, and when each successive rain comes a hardest of mushrooms results. Whenever the heat in the soil of the meadow falls below n certain degree, mushrooms cease to grow, shine the sun ever so much. After that paragraph in your issuea few days ago Tamnias came over with a couple of apples rolled up in paper to show that my remarks at the post-office in the morning were fallacious. "You're a dour headed Scot, Tamnias, but just you take tTiose frnit into Dr——— and ask him whether the blowfly is a sucker or a ehower." "It'll cost mo a day's wages'-to fee the doctor!"

"Never mind that, Tammas, knowledge is the doctor's stock-in-trade. Seven and saxpence would ruin me. I'll rather take your opinion free oratis. lam not a scientist, Tammas, but from what I have noticed in my orchard, both with Ribstono Pippin and other varieties, I have come to the conclusion that it is the common ant that does the excavating of the1 apple. These varieties of apples are highly charged with saccharine and the blue fellow fly simply comes to fill his bottle with the sweet sugar juices laid bare by the navvy emmet." I ■ purposely used a big word or two so as to overawe Tammas. My; subterfuge had the desired effect, for ha threw :fche tu'o apples over into the fowl-yard, and., turning on his heel, muttered something about it being time for me, tc getaway to my work, as he had seen mv mates 011^ tho road an hour ago. Perhaps the reader thinks so, also.