QUEER TRADES.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15275, 27 June 1923, Page 3

QUEER TRADES.

PURSUED FOR A LIVING There are not quite bo many queer trades in America as there are in China, but there are a good many that would look quite diverting on a passport, which is the test of a queer Irade, declares Bassett Digby, F.R.G.S., in the Manchester Guardian. I was once in negotiation with a wealthy zoologist who wanted me to so n ut to Mongolia again for him to collect bizarre rats and mice. My ooul leapt within me at the thought of securing a brand-new passport that should describe me as a rat-catcher. How the Foreign Office would have winced, even in these democratic c'a>s, at issuing credentials in which ' Wo, George Nathaniel, the Marquis Gin—zon," etc., personally recommended a mere rat-catcher to the Chancelleries of Europe 1 And how pleasing the report to the police and sign hotel registers abroad- as "Occupation: Chasseur des rats." A "chasseur" always sounds so distinguished and knightly, however humble his prey-) Roaring Snakes. Rearing, or, as the' Americans say, "raising," poisonous snakes for their venom is quite an industry in Texas, where there arc farms whose only stock is rattlers and copperheads. The venom is dried and bottled up in testtubes in the form of pale yellow crystals, which are used extensively by the foremost doctors of the country for treating epilepsy and other discstscs. Then ' there are highly unscientific exploiters of the rattlesnake, such as an old man in whose hut I took shelter during a thunderstorm while I was walking through the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania. He cut up rattlers, bottled them, with a little pepper, in whisky, and sold the stuff as a cure for consumption. I tasted some — a blistering brew, and a decided improvement on some medicines. Human Targets. There are hundreds of negroes in America, who, if asked their trade, calling or occupation, reply, "Target, sub!'" True; targeting is a slack trade in the winter, but for half the year it is just the sort of indolent, amusing work that niggers love. They are employed in the übiquitous "amusement parks." In one branch of the trade they stick their heads through holes in a canvas screen and submit, grinningly, lo having rubber balls shied at them. In the other branch, which is more popular in hot weather, they sit, clad in singlet and shorts, in a chair on a little platform over a pool of water. When the wooden ball, well and truly flung, hits a wooden disc that releases a lever, the platform falls, and the nigger is dropped with a great splash into the water. Patent Medicine Vendors. Few American social phenomena impressed me more than the patent medicine vendors who tour the rural regions with a group of "vaudeville artists" as their lure. Never shall I forget the moment when, having attended a very cheap vaudeville show at a rustic hall in New Jersey, a raucous-voiced gentleman with a cowboy hat and a quelling, hypnotic, insistent eye that nailed you to your seat like a spike stepped before the curtain between two acts, and, holdup to our horrified gaze a glass jar of spirits containing heaven knows how many feet of what looked like a coil of prize macaroni, convinced us in a few swift-flung, well-chosen words that we were all in imminent danger of harbouring ' a tapeworm. There was hope for us, though—hope, nay, certainty of prompt cure. He bowed and motioned the orchestra to carry on. With a crash and a bang it leapt, four-footed, Into a Sousa noisiness, and up the aisles of the hall came the dainty soubrette, the lady soprano, the red-nosed German comedian, the gauzily-clad "Princess Houri, the World's Most Famous Exponent of Oriental Terpsichorean Art," each laden with "The Doc's infallible cure for tape-worms, a purely vegetarian powder—only 90 cents. I am sure the Commonwealth of North American Tapeworms must have made the best of a bad job and evacuated that little town down there in the swamps ever since. It would have been sheer madness to have attempted to hold an advanced post Lgainst such impossible odds! Vermin Bounties. I have come across somo queer trades associated with the names of rats and cats and hares and dogs. A few years ago the Municipal Government of Paris had one of the periodical spells of enthusiasm for the extermination of rats. Bounties were trfcred, and rat tails began to flow in with gratifying, speed. It came as a horrified shock to the authorities, however, when an apperceptive inspector broke the news that numbers of resourceful Parisians had set up highly lucrative home industries in the cellar, where they skilfully cut up shaven rat skins into strips, sewed them around scraps of twine, and collected the bounty on hundreds of artificial "tails" every day. But these vermin bounties are notoriously productive of trouble. Shortly before I spent a year in Albany, N.Y. (about thirteen years ago), the States cf Maine and New York each offered' a rattlesnake bounty in an attempt to .stamp out a troublesome "wave" of the pest that swept over the two States in the district where they adjoin. The campaign was taken up with great enthusiasm by the farmers and their men, and the bounty paymaster had to work early and late. It was not until well on in the season that the officials of New York, who were paying bounty on each rattler's head, and the officials of Maine, who were paying it on the production of each rattler's bony rattle, which is situated at its' tail, suddenly realised that two collections were being taken up on each serpent. Cats Sold as Hares. The cat-catchers of Paris a few decades ago made a distinctly better living than the rat-catchers. Their customers were the furriers and the small restaurants which bought the carcases as "hare"—knowing full well what they really were. It used to he the regular procedure for discharged chefs to "lay information" against their late employers and hav'ng the pleasure of seeing them fined, Talking of hares reminds me of a human hare I knew—a tramp, whd, util.il the Bolshevik revolution at all events, used to specialise in travelling all up and down the Russian I'mpirc, from the White Sea to the frontier of Afghanistan and from "oland to China, ticketless and unler the scat. "Zarycts" (hare) his nnl'raternity was nicknamed by Hie vnggish Russians, on account of their iliit of vanishing as soon as there us warning nf the approach of the cket inspector. Ths loq-lickers.

In Britain ,ci moor trades included, less thai. century ago, that <?." Hie dog-Ucker- V ■• services of this unusual prof'ssi; n':i body were ei> listed shortly oefori. '.he 'combatants

went into the ring, when dog-fighting was one of the popular national sports, to go down on their knees and lick over the dogs to make sure that they had not been smeared with some bitter or irritant substance which would make the adversary release his grip. _ Another queer trade is that 01 t.';e "Improvers of Coinage," who brazenly do business in the protection of the Russian and Japanese sphere of influence. They are industrious and enterprising Chinese, to whom one brings bags of Chinese silver dollars in which they punch holes; plugging them with base metal and splitting the excavated silver between themselves and you. So much of this sort of thing, and counterfeiting pure and simple, goes on in China that every silver coin is closely examined as a matter of course when tendered as payment.