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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1951-8-15, Page 7amt %ar By Helen Janney Lit c ole had two doctors two doctors about as dilfrrett its every way as any two Wren could be, Doc Boggs was old, in his eighties, and he shouldn't have been practising at all. He was cross and ll-tetnpered and he often got his patients and their prescriptions all mixed up. Doctor Willis, on the other hand was just pushing thirty. lie was alert, dependable and pleasant' to deal with. The women, especially, were most enthusiastic about hitn, "Why," M r s, Preston said, "when I called him for my Willie when he had the measles, he worked like a trooper. When Willie didn't go so well at first he actu- ally cried. A doctor. What do you think of that?" "I know." Mrs. Scott agreed, "He cried over my Martha, too. We both cried, He's sweet. 1 just love him," You see, at first Doc Boggs was the only physician in town. People called hint just because the was there. If they wanted somebody else they'd have to get a man in Bloondale, thirty miles away. So everybody Was mighty glad when Doctor Willis carne to Lindane to see about locating there. The business men and the farm- ers gave hint a lot of encourage- ment, The young married woolen who were expecting babies wel- comed him. In fact, the only per, son who opposed him in any way was old Doc Boggs. "It's a one doctor town," he said when young 'Doc went to call on hint, "bVe don't need or want an- other one here." Doctor Willis cane just the same and set up his practice on Elm Street, He was single so he fixed himself bachelor's quarters in the upstairs over his house, Old Mrs. South who used to do for Doc Boggs, went over to the young dot's now, which made old doc madder than ever. It seemed strange the way young doc took on when Doc Boggs finally passed on. Not many even shed a tear at the funeral. But young doctor Willis sat there • crying openly. 1t made everybody think even more of hint than they did before, for they knew that the old man had. absolutely refused to cooperate with the younger one and that he lost no opportunity to run Ver a while he dated this one and that, playing no favorite. hint down to his patients, "What a wonderful husband Doc- tor Willis would make," was the thought in the minds of more than one mother of a marriageable aged daughter. The girls themselves busied about inviting hint to parties and dances. There was open rivalry for his attention, For a while he dated this one and that, playing no favorites, One summer after he'd been away on his vacation he carte back with a wife, a girl from his old house town 111 Ohio, Jean, that was her name, .had such a ,nice way with her that she soon made friends, Whcn people kept saying over and over that her husband was the sweetest, most tender hearted man in the whole world, she sometimes looked a bit surprised, Sure, she thought he was great, That was one reason she married hint, but nevertheless she felt a bit puzzled at times. And then she found oi.11 some- thing that nobody else knew, 'She kept still and ,just smiled when they began to rave about her hus- band, She smiled acid went about her business of picking up after hint; keeping hint well -fed ancl mended and not really minding the times when he was thoughtless and inconsiderate as all husbands are at times, The way she found otit was that one night he cane home to dinner quite late and dog tireil, too, When she looped at him she saw that his eyes were red. "Don't tell me you've been cry Mg?" she said. "Crying? Mc," he laughed, "What ever gave you that idea?" "Your eyes, They look like 10 "It's those flower„ . . roses, Why is it people always send roses . to the sick? Every place I've boeti today has had a bouquet.of 'cm, 1 hate roses. I'm allergic to 'ctht, I have to take shots all the time, Roses, hoses, roses!" - Over vast areas of tite earth, the world's Anti -Locust Research Cen- tre directs a scientific campaign against this insect menance to our food supplies. This e a rn-p a i g n means so much to every one of us that I thought you plight be in- terested in some of its details as reported.by Dr, J. S. Kennedy in "London Calling." a' * * Locust plagues are probably as old as, agriculture. Our own cen- tury bas witliessed a succession of them, and now, once again, crops are threatened from India in the east to the Atlantic coast of Africa in the west, from the Caspian Sea in the north to Tanganyika in the south, Like any marauders, locusts are bad enough when you, know they are coming, but they are far worse when you do not. Until a few years ago people seldom. did know, and that made for a ranter fatalistic attitude toward locust in- vasions. If warnings can now be issued, that is only because over a period of years reports have been sent in to the Anti -Locust Research Centre in London from all over the world. There they have been painstakingly pieced together, un- til a reasonably connected picture has emerged of what the locusts are likely to do in the way of breed- ing and migration, in any region at any time, * * a: All the same, why is it, after aft these centuries, that we still have to fight the fully mobilized locust armies in this way? It is an ardu- ous, -costly kind of war in which victory is never final. Why have we not tasted this wild competitor for our food supplies, as- we have others? * * * This has always been the stain aint of the Anti -Locust Centre and its director, Dr. B. P. Uvarov. But the first thing 'needed was much more knowledge about locusts. There is not just one but a num- ber of different kinds of locust, each adapted to life in a particular •climate and a particular type of country. * * * The swarming locust is a mobile, elusive subject of study. The big- gest iggest mystery of .all was what hap- pened to the locusts when they were not swarming. After a run of plague years not only the swarms but even the individual insects dis- appear completely, everywhere, only to reappear several years later, * * 0 Between plague periods, locusts live like other grasshoppers, as scattered, inconspicuously coloured insects leading solitary and mostly very quiet lives. But unlike ordin- ary grasshoppers, when they are crowded together they change into a brightly coloured, gregarious and intensely restless form—so different from the solitary foram that it was once taken for another insert al- together, * * x, It was Dr. Uvarov who first rade the discovery that the two so- called "species" could be converted one into the other simply by keep- ing the insects apart or by keeping then: crowded together. Here, at'' last, was the key to the origin of the plagues, - It was more than that: it was a discovery of first-class importance for biology generally, because the changes induced by crowding prov- _ ed to be hereditary, showing up in the offspring of crowded- parents even if the offspring themselves were not crowded. *' * q, Biologists went ahead to exploit the discovery of "change of phase," as the transformation , from the • solitary 10 the gregarious fw'm and back again is called. And their work in the years between the wars has built up this picture of how an outbreak starts. The first re- quirement is a period when condi- tions are particularly favourable for the solitary insects to live and breed, so that they multiply rapidly. For the desert locust the crucial condition seems to be unusually good rains, so that extra genera- tions can be squeezed in before the country dries up again and breeding stops. But to produce gre- garious ragarious swarms from the myriads of scattered insects then present, a less favourable period must follow the more favourable one. When that happens, the insects can find suit- able living conditions only in re- stricted areas, and they become very crowded there. * * * Frequent meeting of insect with insect set off a train of changes inside them, as a result of which their behaviour, colour and shape all change. They become attracted to each other yet, at the sante time, hypersensitive to each other's movements, so that their excitement grows until they cannot keep still. In a few generations they have ceased to be solitary grasshoppers, and have gathered into great swarm which sally forth on the restless, far-ranging flights which make them such unexpected and catastrophic pests. * * 1' The important thing is that this sequence of events can occur in only a few relatively small places within the whole region inhabited by each kind of locust. The soli- taries may often become very num- erous elsewhere, but if there is little crowding no swarths are produced to emigrate and spread the danger. And since, generally speaking, the old-world locusts live mainly in re- gions that are under -developed agri- culturally, the damage they do is not often serious, as long as they remain solitaries and stay at hone. * * * Thus, the way to deal with the locust problem became clear. It was to locate the special "outbreak areas" and, as a first step, to des- tro}' the swarms there before they got away; and, as a second step, to seek the best way to alter con- ditions of vegetation, and so on, SO that swarms never form, thus solving the problem, * , * * With these aims in view, interna- tional organizations have recently been established in the outbreak areas of two of the African locusts. Success can already be claimed in suppressing outbreaks of these two, the red locust of East and South Africa and the one called the Afri- can migratory locust, whose home is West Africa, The third plain African locust is the desert locust, which has now broken out again. It is a much more difficult prob- lem. Its outbreak areas are in semi -desert regions, more numer- ous and less constant in locality from year to year, and they form an interconnected series spreading across many more frontiers, not -only in Africa but away across to India. * * * The trouble is that until rather recently governments have tended to pour out money to deal 'with a locust plague once it was upon them, but to lose interest when it eventually subsided from natural causes. Every country was inclined to blame its neighbours for send- ing Life locusts, * * * Once the necessary •knowledge was available, so that a plan for plague -prevention could be worked O ' WOOD SCREW dd' • SY • HAROLD ( ARNEYT SCREW HAMMERED LAT A W( p E MADE FROM AN RDINARY Ii WOOO SCREW. BY FLA'T'TENING THE 5CrLgW hire A -TRIANGULAR SHAPE, HOLDS THE HAMMER HANDLE ....._...".............___21......a......1145 HEAR i. 00 Try and Top These, You Gardeners — Two huge geraniums, the larger over 12 feet high and both a solid mass of blooms, are the pride of John Bell, gardener for the CPR at Port Me- Nicoll's famous dockside gardens. Grown in his greenhouse, the two plants threaten to raise the roof. Port McNicoll is the home port of the CPR's Great Lake Steamships about 70 miles North West of Toronto. Mr. Bell has been gardener at Port McNicoll for 31 years and the results of his work have been a constant attraction to tourist's who visit the Port, either en route for a Great Lakes voyage on a C.P. Lake boat or just to see the famous flower gardens. «Pop Goes The Weasel" Really Means -That. The Tailor Pawned His Iron Some of the many London shops which are featuring specially color- ful window displays to 'nark the Festival of Britain' have been in business for 200 years and more. That is a long time to have been carrying on the saute trade in the sante shop. There is a story that an eccentric Londoner decided he would only deal with shops which nos been established at least 200 years. He is said to have had no difficulty in meeting his needs. In the case of the Strand firm of Thresher & Glenny, shirttnakers, tailors, and hosiers, it means that Admiral Lord Nelson used to step over the same threshold at 152 Strand where festival visitors to London now are entering to buy anything from a finely tailored suit to a festival tie. It is quite a thrill ir, itself to enter this shop and recall that Lord Nel- son, after losing his arab in battle in 1797, called in on his return honkie for This usual order of stock- ings, He was greeted by Mr. Thresher, who hastened to express regret at the admiral's loss, But Lord Nelson cut him short, so the story goes, with this jest: "Tut, tut, man: lucky for you it wasn't my leg. I want another dozen pairs of silk stockings," There are other shops of similar antiquity, like James Lock, (tatters, of St. James Street; Ede & Ravens - croft, robe makers and tailors, of I-Iolborn, and, believe it or not, a delightful little silversmiths, estab- out, similar obstacles still stood in the way. Since the locust knows no frontiers, the plan called for co- operation by many different coun- tries—above all, against the desert locust. * a, * • International agreenhent to im- plement the plan was obtained only in 1938. Now, at last, it is being implemented—at any rate for the three types of locusts I have men- tioned. It may well turn out that tike final prevention of swarming by 'some locusts will be economic- ally possible only as a by-product of plans for general agriculture] development. lished in 1690 and caller "The Silver Mouse Trap," in Carey Street just behand the law courts in the Strand, writes Peter Lyne in The Christian Science Monitor. But are they stuffy and antivated, these 200 -year-old London shops? What sort of shop window and what sort of atmosphere is there in an establishment like Thresher & Glenny, for whom Dr, David Liv- ingstone, famed African pioneer and explorer, designed a marketable mosuito net? Are there cobwebs on the ceiling and arc the shops old-fashioned be- hind the counter? Not a bit of it. There certainly is nothing stuffy about most of these old -established firms, In fact, they claim that an old firm must be specially progressive or it would not survive these mo- dern days, Thresher & Glenny, for instance, is immensely proud of its history and old traditions. But the firm freely admits its present-day appeal is dependent on the efficiency of its modern organization. Visitors may come and look at a museum. But shops depend for their existence on all comers being persuaded to buy, not just look. It is recorded that in 1861 the late S. Endicott Peabody of the United States entered Thresher & Gleany's and ordered some of the India tweed suits which he thought would be suitable for the American clim- ate, Today representatives of the first spend several months every year in the United States booking orders for individual customers. Though the firm specializes in the best traditional English and Scottish cloths, it is pioneering, as well, the latest 100 per cent rayon suitings. It also procluces an origin- al and entertaining nlopthly,publica- tion for circulation to regular cus- tomers, Besides being an education in clothes, this publication provides a wealth of other uncxepected in- formation. . What is the origin of the phrase, "Pop goes the weasel"? When I used to sing that old song as a small boy I used' to conjure up a picture of a greedy weasel eating too notch, But according, to Thresher & Gleu- ny's monthly Miscellanea, the weasel i5 a long, thin pressing iron, the most easily spared of all tailor's irons, hence the first to be pawned, or popped, as pawning is colloquial- ly called, That explanation seems far more likely in the context of the rest of the warning in the song, which went like this: "And down the city road, In and out the Eagle (a tavern)', That's the way the money goes— Pop goes the weasel." Then there was another verse about half a pound of tuppeny rice and ]calf a pound of treacle. Any- way, the British Broadcasting Cor- poration became interested in Thresher & Glenny's explanation, and there was quite a national argu- ment, 'Budget' Once ,Mt almit Small Leather Bag Some English words aro roost:• economical. In two or three syr+ labies a whole picture can be con- jured up by the person who known the fascinating history of a par - Uvular word. Coward, for instance, is derived front the Latin, cauda, a tail, sn4 the idea is conveyed of an anim slinking away with its tail between its legs. Even today with universal edu- cation, some people still find it s laborious business to write a let- ter. Lines are scratched out and ink splotches spoil the appearance of the page. 'That's just as it should be, for letter comes from a Latin verb meaning to smear. When characters, that is indivld- ual letters, were first put on ren• ord, they were smeared or scrawled on parchment. A book, strictly speaking, should always be made of wood. This word is a modernization of the Anglo- Saxon hoc, a beech tree, which provided bark for writing pur- poses, We are so used to hearing of charwomen that we 'lever wonder how they got their name. They are women who do a chart, or turn of work. Shakespeare spoke of "the maid that milks and does the mean• est chases." Honey and Moon Constables who pace the beat are occupied very differently from the original holders of their office, Coo - stable is a distortion of comes stab- uli, the count of the stable, once a high state official. There is, however, disagreement among the authorities about the origin of the word honeymoon. A charming explanation is that there was once a custom in northern Eu- rope of drinking mead (made frons honey) for thirty days after a nhar- riage feast. But more people incline to the cynical view that a honeymoon is merely the time during which affec• tion first grows to a peak and then wanes, just like the moon after it ' has reached the full. People always admire a good pro- file. Literally this means in front of a thread. That Budget Bag A word which has been' much on our tongues recently is budget, This merely means a little bag, from the French bourgette, The term was first applied to the chan- cellor's leather case, but now when we talk of a budget, we mean only the contents of the bag. Exchequer, incidentally, is de- rived from the Old French for s chessboard. In the days when French was the language of the English coast, accounting had not been brought to its present fine art, Not being very skilled at calcula- tion, the treasurer lased to reckon up the king's taxes by means of counters on a board marked out in. squares. The chancellor himself was orig- inally an official in charge of a chancel, or latticed barrier, in the law courts. The Latin, cancellus, means a crossbar or grating. - No Smoke, No Oil—Smokeless smokestacks at the huge oil refinery at Abadan, Iran, symbolize the fact that oil production there has dropped almost to zero since Iran nationalized the industry and Britain ordered its trained personnel and oil tankers out of Iran By Arthur Pointer