Tárogató, 1943-1944 (6. évfolyam, 3-12. szám)

1944-04-01 / 10. szám

16

TÁROGATÓ

the Christians. In certain counties, more than half the people have fled. In the areas where the famine is worst, a mu of land (1/6 English acre) can be bought for the price of one bushel of grain, probably cheaper in terms of grain than it has ever been, and a good indication of the desperation of the people. Most people have sold clothing, farm animals and implements and anything marketable. The scarcity of grain caused prices last winter to reach a figure about ten times what we paid in Szechuan. The present price of grain in North Honan has fallen to half what it was in winter and spring, but even so prices are twice what they are here in Loyang and this city now has the highest recorded prices in Free China. At the moment, it costs about $1.00 Canadian money for one pound of millet or wheat in North Honan. It normally takes about two pounds of millet per day to feed a person, or $60.00 Canadian money a month at these prices. For a family of five it would cost now at least $200 Canadian money a month even to maintain life. It is estimated that by spring, 1944, grain will cost three times as much as now. You can see the magnitude of the problem of relief.”

DUCK GOES MINESWEEPING

Despite all our care and ingenuity, this work of minesweeping is not done without loss. We have lost over a hundred minesweeping vessels since the war began; many of our fishermen from the East Coast, and from the Western Isles have given their lives; but there’s no lack of men to take their places. And men of all sorts are minesweeping who never thought to join the King’s Navy—men from underwriters to cotton operatives, from chemists’ assistants to barristers at law. A number are in the Fleet sweepers built specially by the Admiralty and' sometimes accompanying our mighty men of war, and others are in the converted fishing fleets, paddle steamers and the rest. These latter often have pets aboard —in one case a duck which waddles about the deck quacking defiance at the seagulls; and they paint their score of exploded mines on the ship’s funnel—a white chevron for one mine, a red one for five, a blue star for twenty-five, and so on. If she brings down an enemy aircraft—and several have done this—and some more than once—she paints a swastika insted. The record for mines exploded is held by the trawler, Rolls Royce,

with a hundred and fifty to her credit. There are some skippers who are as good at finding mines as they were at finding fish. —From a B.B.C. talk.

TEN THOUSAND YEARS IN NATURE’S COLD STORAGE

A Friend has been over the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and feasted her eyse on a piece of steak ten thousand years old.

It is part of a mammoth which roamed over Europe and Asia and met its doom in Siberia, sinking helplessly into a soft icy march. There its body, frozen hard, remained until it was dug up in a state of perfect preservation, by scinetists, and sections of it were taken to the museum. A piece of it is now in a bottle, showing the dried fat and meat. A piece of the skin, taken from the hollow of the right knee, shows the thick inner coat of the mammoth’s short woolly hair. Forty years ago a party of Russian scientists in Siberia came upon one of these giant animals in such an excellent state of preservation, complete with hide, hair and flesh, that they cut off a juicy steak and made a meal off the meat that was several thousand years old. They vowed it tasted dilicious, and were none the worse off for eating it.

Sir Hubert Wilkins tells how, on one of his Polar voyages, he and his party dined on the flesh of a whale that had been dead for three years. Nature’s refrigerator had kept it fresh.

CHURCH SETS UP RADIO COMMISSION

Dr. James S. Thomson, President of the University of Saskatchewan and former General Manager of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has been named by the United Church as chairman of a Commission to study the possibilities of wider use of radio. Dr. Gordon A. Sisco has been named Secretary, and the Executive has been set up in Toronto and regional committees have been named in several parts of Canada, with some preliminary studies made. Mr. Brock King has been named deputy chairman, and he presided at a recent meeting.

The leg does not feel the chain if the mind is in heaven. —Tertullian.

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