HORN OPENS JAMBOREE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 233, 1 October 1929, Page 11

HORN OPENS JAMBOREE

GIFT TO CHIEF SCOUT MATABELE WARRIOR’S TRIBUTE A horn with the most wonderful carrying powers was used to herald the 21st. anniversary of the Boy Scout movement during the jamboree at Arrowe Park, Birkenhead. It is the Kudu horn, from a species of antelope, which was presented many years ago to Lord Baden-Powell by a Matabele chief and awoke the world’s first scouts on Brownsea in 1907. Horns made by native races in Africa carry a great distance, probably up to five or six miles. They are made not only from the horns of cows, but also from the ivory tusks of elephants. In the 15th and 16th centuries the French and Germans used very finely-carved ivory horns for hunting, and even today, in some parts of South America, use is still made of the buffalo horn for hunting, it being preferred to any other sort of horn, particularly for woodlands, on account of its deep note and its great carrying properties over long distances. For most practical purposes, however, the metal horn, with mathematical precision to produce the exact notes and tone that are wanted for coaching, hunting, and orchestral purposes, has superseded the natural horn. But though the natural horn has no place in music, it still survives' in religious services of the Jews, in tho shape of a special ram’s horn, lightly coloured, and nearly flat, and often difficult to blow. In the horn’s survival in this form one finds a link with Biblical times, when cornets and trumpets made of the horn of a ram, an ibex, or an ox were used by the ancient Hebrews for signals for announcing the “Jubilee,” for proclaiming the new year, for the purposes of war, and for giving notice by the sentinels at the watch towers of tho approach of an enemy. It was with trumpets of ram’s horns that the priests blew the “long blast” that preceded the fall of tho walls of Jericho.