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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1959-10-22, Page 2FAIRY TALE-COME-TRUE — His name's really Jack, and the monster plant was grown from a bean. Jack Skinner Jr., 8, can't begin to reach the top of this giant castor bean plant. Like Jack's bean stalk in the fairy tale, someone threw a bean away, and the plant just grew. BLE TALKS 6a:rvz Aramws. -during the winter, test they .get too dry. While you are 'working in the flower borders,. you might like to pot up healthy specimens of Zinnias, marigolds, calenchilaS, and similar eendels before frost and bring them into the how% for flowering plants. Mix into the soil, before potting them, generous .portion .01 plant food —about a teaspoonful to a quart Of soil, writes the Garden Edi- tor of The Christian Science, Monitor. You ,probably know the trick of watering outdoor plants on cold nights to keep them from being frostbitten. Dahlias will. often come through this way, and marigolds and zinnias in bloom, Hardy chrysanthemums can be covered for the night with large sheets of polythene, burlap, or building paper when heavy frost threatens, but take it oft again first thing in the morning. Many Skeletons In These Cupboards Skeletons ranging from that of an Irish giant 8 ft, 4 in. tall to those of pygmies barely half his size are housed in one of the world's little-known museums at the Royal College of Surgeons, Iincoln's Inn. Fields, London. Founded by a man who has been called the father of modern surgery, John Hunter, the mu- seum contains countless skulls and skeletons — a queer collec- tion of old bones from all over the world. It was once claimed that all the races of the earth were represented in this "skul- lery," as some medical students call it. Bombs damaged and charred some of the specimens during the war but the Irish giant's skeleton was unscathed, HoW it originally got into the museum makes a bizarre story. The Irishman's name was Charles O'Brian (sometimes spelt Byrne) and while he was alive his great height and bulk made him an object of curiosity wherever he went. He probably suffered a good deal from peo- ple's stares and had a suspicion that when he died his body might not be safe in an ordinary grave. So before his death at twenty- two, In June, 1783, through ex- cessive drinking, he bequeath- ed to two fishermen £100 each on condition that they would take his body out to sea and drop it overboard. He had an inkling that Hunter was anxi- ous to g e t possession of h i s skeleton and felt sure that his burial-at-sea plan would defeat the surgeon's object. He was wrong. Hunter told the fishermen that he did not wish to prevent there earning their £200 by disposing of the giant's body at sea, but he sug- gested that if they would first tie a rope to it, he could after- wards haul it up again and then pay them another iC200,' They agreed. Hunter got the body,, and the Irish giant's bones finished up in the museum. In Stockton, Calif., Teodoro Lopez' Herrera held up a bank, was asked by the cashier to sign his name for the money he took, dutifully obeyed, was soon track- ed down and arrested. ISSUE 4a — 1959 seeee'lfee A Trying To Recoil Those Old Rhymes The recent confession here that, I couldn't jest remember the counting-out rhyme for the number .of kernels in a hill of Corn brought a complaint front p, niece, She wanted, to know why I could remember intr. InIntY, and not remember "two „for the crows ," I can, indeed, remember inty- minty, but it is not my own Voice that I hear when I say it. Instead, I hear the eager, high squeal of a certain bug-eyed young lady who was said to have this haunting eomplexion about the eyes because she jumped rope all the time, She did—up and down, up and down, her long black braids flopping around, and the excessive exer- cise was supposed to keep her lean and pop-eyed. She was pretty, and inty-minty was her counting-out rhyme, probably coming down to her from gener- ations before, There is, in certain of the va- rious Mother Gooses. a counting- out rhyme that starts, "Intery mintery, cutery corn. „ ." The one this young lady would recite to commence our playtime per- haps had a phonetic relationship, and it went about like this: Inty-minty, dibbety fig, Delia, nom-a-nom a-nig. Eye-cha, kigh-cha, Dow-a-nigh-cha HUM PUNG TUSK Galliga-balliga-boo Out goes Y, 0, , • , My niece knew I could repeat it, for I taught it to her once. But in all my misguided youth I never actually counted out with it. I merely heard, many times, this rope-skipping nymph of the startled eyes say it. I heard it enough so I have it for all time. I give it, thus to the antiquar- ians who may want to jot it down. This girl had many rhymes, and as I run through some of her rope-skipping jingles, it sudden- ly occurs to me that times have changed, Antidiscrimination and reciprocal toleration have come into our focus, and some of those childhood rhymes won't pass to- day's requirements! Although they were innocent, and full of fun, I can't nevertheless. set them down here! Isn't that in- teresting! One of her best skip- rope rhymes ended with: Salt, Vinegar, Mustard, Cay-ANN PEPPER! Then the two rope-holders really started to whirl, and tried to make the rope go so fast the young lady couldn't out-skip it. They would count—one. two, three. . . And the girl would still be going at ote-hundred- and-twenty-two, one-hundred- and-twenty-three , , . It took a lot of pepper to out-twirl that one! The counting-out rhymes, we'd better tell our moderns, were III determine sides, or who would go first—or last—and there was a juvenile faith that whoever did the counting-out would play the game fair. You could if you took advantage, waggle the fin- ger once too few, or once teo often, and shift the beat. But nobody did that, much, And with 18 or 20 youngsters gathered by lks,,pesture gap in the luscious twilight of bygone times, using the drawn-out enjoyment intend- ed. Sometimes it could be quite late before we did anything. One of our best games was called "Hoist The Green Sail," which we all thought was "Oys- ter Green Sale," whatever that might mean. We would count out and divide up, and one side would run off into the surround- ings and hide, When that side was well hid- den their captain would come back to the "gool" and with a stick in the loose sand would draw an elaborate Map purport- ing to show just where his col- leagues were hiding. The rules about this were definite. He was supposed to be holiest, and give Lis a fair picture of the route taken to the hideaway. Signifi, cant landmarks had to be shown, Deceit came, mostly, an the dis- tances, He could, make a mile look like 20 feet, or like 10 miles. lie might indicate a "tree," but it could be two feet high or an ancient oak, When we were satisfied we knew the devious route to pursue to find the hidden team, we'd all start out, Sometimes, if the search didn't go well, we'd have to come back ad look at the map again. Eventually, we'd find them, and then there'd be a a fight over the mapmaker's race for the "gaol," and usually basic honesty and upright na- ture. Not a real fight—we didn't fight much, Once, to show how it some- times went, one team decided to hide in Mr. Ramsay's oat bin. Mr. Ramsay kept trotters, and had a big bin lined with zinc. It smelled lovely in there, but Mr. Ramsay frowned upon our en- joying it. You got in by drop- ping through a lid, and you couldn't get out unless somebody handed you up, or reached down and pulled you, On this day about a dozen Oyster Green Sailors dropped through the hole, and joined a tramp who had gone in there to take a nap. Nobody knew he was in there, It wasn't hard for the opposition team to locate the hiding place, for the to-do was considerable. Mr, Ramsay had arrived, too, and as the tramp emerged Mr. Ramsay chased him across the field with a buggy whip, and we all stood in the barn doors and called "Oyster Green Sale!" None of this, I suppose, was very much fun, for it didn't survive. I suppose it didn't,, any- way. Haven't heard that they've launched any space ships with inty?minty, have you?—By John Gould in The Christian Science Monitor. Crook Betrayed By Best Pal. Warning of a great fire at a two-acre waste rubber dump in. Tottenham, London, was given recently by a former police dog who jumped on a wall and start- ed barking. The watchman, 78- year-old Fred Pullen, raced to his wooden office in the centre of the dump and just managed to telephone the fire brigade be- fore the flames reached him. Many folk have cause to be thankful that they keep a dog when the house blazes or bur- glars pay a visit. But over in Milan, Italy, one man is not so pleased with his too-friendly pooch. Police arrived the other day to charge him in connection with an alleged fraud of $18,000, They found only his wife at home and she assured them that her hus- band Was away, The police seemed satisfied and were on the point of leav- ing, but then his dog appeared. Hearing his master's name spoken, the faithful little hound barked excitedly and wagged his tail. Then he went to a cup- board and barked again. Open- ing the cupboard door, the police found their man crouching inside. Says Railroads Should Wake Up We've never met Sherwood Githens Jr. of Durham but we feel we'd like to. We think this because of a letter that came into our hands the other day carrying his sig- nature. It. was a copy of an original addressed to the South- ern Railway. What was so intriguing about it was that Githens had the tem- erity to suggest that Southern, if it wanted to, might compete With the airlines fat passenger dollars. In addition, he outlined a few ways for improving ser- The Earth AS Seen From Plan0 Venus. *If Venus is a, brilliant object in our sky, Earth would be a far more brilliant abject as, seen from a position in the orbit of Venus. Let us consider just what could be learned, about Earth by the methods that •we have to apply when, studying the other worlds of the Solar System, Suppposing we are at the point occupied by Venus when it is nearest to Earth—when Venus is in 'inferior conjunction,' that is, when it crosses an imaginary line, running from directly over- head to the south point of the horizon at the same time as the Sun while in the 'earth-side' half of its orbit. Earth would be seen 'in opposition,' the whole of its disc fully illuminated, To the naked eye it would dominate the night sky making even the most brilliant stars seem feeble glimmerings of light compared with it. It would be fully six or seven times as bright as Venus appears to us, because when we see Venus at its brightest only a fraction of the illuminated cur- 'face is turned towards Earth. The chances are that the Moon also would be visible .as a Com- pletely illuminated disc, Continued observations would show the movements of the Moon, and it would be seen to travel from one side of the planet to the other; the separa- tion of the two 'stars,' when greatest, would be roughly equal to the Moon's diameter as seen from. Earth; quite sufficient for the unaided eye to recognize the movement despite the over- whelming brightness of Earth. The Moon yould look brighter than any real star and even without a telesccope, there could be no doubt that our world has a very considerable satellite, A difference in the colour of the light should be quite noticeable; Earth's would be white, and rather bluish, while the Moon's light would be yellow. . . . Blue light is scattered by the atmosphere much more than red, and as a result of this the oceans on Earth would appear not through, light reflected, from their sUrfaces but because f the overlying, blue light in the atmo- sphere. In the same way, colours of the land surfaces would be modified. The dark brown areas would tend to become dark green, yellows would be green- ish, while any really black parts of the surface would tend to look blue-black. In regions per- manently covered with snow and ice, the white would be glaringly bright but the use of filters at the telescope eyepiece would show that this, too, was slightly blue, Soon it would be possible to build up a picture of the con- tinental outlines. Certainly, the map would be far from complete end would be incorrect in a num- ber of important respects. Even so, after a few successive opposi- tions of Earth, ideas about our world, so far as the actual dis- tribution o f continents an d oceans are concerned, would cer- tainly be nearer to the truth than the ideas held by men about their own planet a few centuries .ago. — From "Other Worlds In Space," written and illustrated by Terry Maloney. vice if the railroad was really interested, No crackpot schemes, just sug- gestions like: Replacing the 14 "old-fashion ed Pullman" cars operating in and out of North Carolina with the new shiny, stainless steel cre- ations; Creating passenger schedules with the passenger's convenience in mind; Employing attractive hostesses who would appear before civic and business groups, extolling the virtues and dependability of "modern" railway travel; Offering a few niceties, such AS free "goodwill" coffee and doughnuts to early morning boarders and cutting total rail- toad passenger costs to the point that they will be competitive with air travel; Converting day coaches into "rooms" resembling hotel lob- bies and emphasizing the no- cramp advantages of traveling this way; Launching an intensive adver- tising and promotional campaign to tell the public that passenger trains are still running and that dirty cinders, stuffy coaches and cracked white porcelain wash basins are not necessarily stand- ard equipment. "We have seen Southern Rail- way ads lauding your innova- tions in the handling of freight but never anything on your pas- senger service except to adver- tise your losses," writes Githens, In essence, all this Duthamite is suggesting Is that the rail- roads apply a little Twentieth Century business savvy in their passenger service before writing it Off completely. He hold.s that a railroad, if it wants to, can of- fee a dependability, if not a ineastire of Comfort, that airlines and but companiee cannot: Charlotte;, N.C,, Observer. Remember the apple butter of your childhood? Cooking gently on the kitchen stove, it smelled spicy and cidery and appetizing, Then. when it was done, the first taste of it served on home-made bread was a special autumn memory. Here is a recipe for this butter which you may want to use right now, APPLE BUTTER 5 cups prepared fruit (4 pounds ripe apples) 7% cups (3% pounds) sugar 3/2 teaspoon algpice 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 bottle'liquid fruit pectin First, prepare the fruit. Re- move blossoms and stem ends from about 4 pounds of ripe ap- ples. Cut into small pieces (do not peel or core). Add 61/e cups water, Bring to bell. Cover and simmer 10 minutes. Crush com- pletely. Cover and simmer 5 minutes longer. Place in a large sieve lined with a double thick- ness of cheesecloth. Drain off 5 cups juice to use in making apple jelly (recipe follows). Set juice aside. Use fruit pulp for making apple butter. To make the butter, press pulp through sieve, Measure 5 cups Into a very large saucepan. Add sugar and spices, Bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and at once stir in liquid pectin. Skim off foam with metal spoon. Ladle quickly into glasses. Cover at once with GIs inch of hot paraf- fin. Makes 6 pounds of butter, Or enough for 12 medium glasses. APPLE JELLY 5 cups juice (see recipe above) 7 1/2 cups (3% pounds) sugar bottle of liquid fruit pectin Mix juice and sugar in a very large saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat, stirring con- stantly. At once stir in liquid pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly, Remove from heat and skim off foam with metal spoon. Pour quickly into glasses. Cover at once with 1/8 inch of hot paraffin, Makes 6 pounds of jelly, or enough for '12 medium glasses. If you'd like to have your own applesauce this winter, make it this way: * s APPLESAUCE Wash and drain 'fresh, sound apples. Remove stem and blos- som ends, Slice apples. Cook tAM PC511 MAC Prime Whit- Idt Harold Mattnillan. fries bri- o tdhi duririg hit visit To SteevOritere 'Stotlorid., election- adrIngr 'fat tlia tefiSetvetiVii. pa rty. until soft, (May need a little water to prevent sticking.) Press apples through sieve Or food mill to remove skin and seeds, Sweeten sauce to taste. Reheat to boiling. Pour boiling hot, into hot glass jars. Stir to re- move air bubbles. Process 20 minutes in boiling-water bath, Note: Duchess and other apples which "sauce" without straining should be pared and cored before cooking. If you like a combination of fruits in your conserve, try putting blueberries with your apples. APPLE-BLUEBERRY CONSERVE 4 cups chopped apples 4 cups blueberiles 6 cups sugar % cup raisins 4 tablespoons lemon juice Wash fruit, Core, pare, chop and measure apples. Mix all in- gredients. Boil until thick. Pour, boiling hot, into hot glass jars: seal at once. APPLE-CHERRY- PINEAPPLE CONSERVE 3 cups chopped apples cups pitted cherries 2 cups chopped pineapple 11 cups sugar % teaspoon salt 1 cup shelled nuts Wash fruit. Core, pare and chop apples. Pit Cherries, Pare and chop fresh pineapple (can- ned pineapple may be used). Measure fruit and mix with sugar, Let stand 4-5 hours, Boil until thick. Add salt and nuts about 5 minutes before remov- ing from heat, Pour, boiling hot into hot glass jars and seal at once. The Story Of A Lovely Tree Fragments of birch bark, Toll- ed for ease of storage, provide one of the very oldest examples of the use of trees by mankind in Britain. They were intended, it is believed, for making con- tainers, and they had lain buried in the peat for some 7,000 years before they were unearthed, about 1950, at Starr Carr near Scarborough. The pollen grains preserved with them sleeve 'that at that early date birchwoods already overspread much of northern England; ,they had in- vaded the slowly-warming tun- dras after the ice had retreat- ed, , , So began the story of a lovely tree that'has ever since remain- ed a leading element in the woodland scene. Birch is above all a pioneer, One of those trees that can read- fly invade fresh territory. As trees grow, it is short-lived, sel- dom standing for as long as 100 yeara. . Its' fragile grace con- ceals an innate toughness of character that enables it to colo- nize bare ground, even on the fringe of polar regions where the soil is frozen for most of the year, and never thaWs for more than a few :feet below the stir- face. The British forester knows birch best as an invader of felled woodlands that are left to lie thiplanted. : Birch makes an airborne invaSibil, spreading solely by means of tiny winged Seeds, released each autumn from its long lambs-tail catkins thos break up. Half a mil-: lion of these scads are needed to Make tip one pound, and they Pro, produced Jo. PrO$00 40: quantities, year after year, to. be swept everywhere by the winds; in autumn you cut) see the birch. woods sprinkled with them., like confetti, , — Birch is .above a light- demanding tree, It can only. thrive in the .unobstructed. light of the sun, and dwindles and dies if set below the shade of other trees, The forester today regards the birch with mixed. feelings, Although he hardly ever plants it, is is likely to in- 1,1.rate into • every plantation he makes, every wood he tends. He is loth to accept it as a main crop, since it can only yield a low volume of timber which will bring but .a poor price as turn- eNy wood or small sawmill tint- bet.., De: pits its beauty, birch is not very satisfactory as a street tree, since it is ,short-lived, does not take kindly to pruning, and lacks vigour when its roots are set amid hard pavements, Nor does it feature well along the hedge- rows, where again its short life- span is a disadvantage, But in a garden, where it can be al- lowed to expand, unprnried, its graceful crown of foliage, a weeping birch makes a lovely sight; the shade it casts is so light that flowering bulbs can. be grown beneath it, to produce in spring a delectable combina- tion of their blossom with the white bark and emerald green unfolding leaves of the silver birch. — From "The Living For- est," by H. L, Edlin, Fall Is Time. To Tuck In The Garden Those of us who live in colder climates are beginning to' do "last things" before heavy frost closes the blooming season. October is a fine time to do many garden tasks. It is a plant- ing time, a clean-up time, and a storing time, Planting spring- flowering bulbs is spaced along, from the tucking in of daffodils, hyacinths, snowdrops and other little bulbs, to the stowing un- derground of tulips. Evergreens and spring-flower- ing trees and shrubs are usually planted in autumn, This gives them a chance to become estab- lished. Be s u r e, however, to keep them watered up to freez- ing weather, and to mulch them well the first winter. The perennial border wel- comes a going over at this sea- son. Phlox should be dug up and divided every three or four years. It is not too late to se- parate and .replant iris clumps. Oriental poppies and other per- ennials that have finished bloom- ing also can be moved. Plant food that works slowly, like bone meal, should be in- corporated into the soil, and a mulch should protect the roots, Later the whole perennial bed will need winter protection, but this should wait until after freezing. Gladiolus corms and other summer-flowering bulbs are lift- ed, dried, and stored for re- planting next year. Moth flakes or DDT dust in paper bagi with the gladiolus corms control thrip, Begonia tubers and dahlia roots will winter in a cool part of the cellar if covered with dry peat moss or sand. Remove any infected portions before storing, and inspect them at intervals L REAK STORM -,., Men and machines work its deer, free 1mbs from it street offer d freak, nine-nich snow fell on. nverk Cato. bOES MORE THAN BUZZ — Louis kichards, graduate design student oi Illinois has harnessed the eerialty buzz of ci 1.37 11,p, model aircraft engine ta -groUnd trOntparfolion. Hit e'Skteler i" a n 18 inch long alunlinurn platform on wheels, tarries its pOstnger in two -fooled tornfort Aleut 1 -2 MileS an hour, three tarter The speed normally ma'cle- by -6 fiedesirion, Highly tocineuverebil, the 12-pound device folds into a c6nVdt C6rryin§ tcise.