DAB and FLOUNDER
Walter-
GRAS
Che SNAPSHOT GUILD
Any farm offers a host of opportunities for picture taking. You'll find
barnyard scenes among your most Interesting animal pictures.
PICTURES ON THE FARM
WHEN I was a small boy one
farm?
Was
Q
On scenics. You won't find the breath-taking scenery of a Grand Canyon or a Niagara" on a farm, no. But almost any farm affords subject ma matter for intimate views: a cury- ing wagon track framed by trees; team of horses, pulling a mowing machine, allhouetted on the crest of
animals than when you visit of the great events of every year
to spend a week at
my grandparents' farm. It seemed to me
that all the goodness of the world was to be found in the dirt- floored cellar of the old house. It had that moist, warm odour of apples, potatoes, and other fruits and vegetables-stored there against the coming win- ter and along its walls shelf after shelf of home canned beans and tomatoes and penches.
hill country stream with sum- mer wild flowers growing on banks.
Or people. One of the tricks of making good informal portraits of people is to show them in ran
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Nothing has more appeal for cily dweller, I think, than a form. And nowhere will a camera enthu- siast and more subjects for his snap- shots. For there, on the farm, almost every type of subject a per- BON can wish for animal shots, Intimate scenies, informal portraits, architectural pletures of barns and buildings, flower close-ups. The in- finite variety of farm life offers an infinite variety of pictures.
their
their natural activities. A close-up natural surroundings, engaged in of grandfather fixing the tractor; o snap of Sue with an apron full of cggs; a picture of Bill loading milk cans on the truck. Shots like these, which tell a story in themselves, nbound around any farm.
Or, as a last suggestion, why not combine a whole series of such shots in an around-the-clock story? You can start with the early morn- ing chores, follow the cattle out to posture, pleture the work of culti- vation. Around the house there are chickens to be fed, cooking to ba Take animal shots, for
done, mending that is needed. Your On almost any form you will find
camera can follow the farmer, and horses, cattle,
his wife, from early dawn to pigs, chickens-a
the variety of barnyard animals close
cool of the evening, when they re- by for pleture inking. What beller
lax in the rockers on the porch. chance to make good close-ups of
example.
John van Guilder
THE HONGKONG, TELEGRAPH
SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1948.
But where are the new
detectives?
S this nostalgia for Lord Peter Wimsey and Philo Vanco which I feel when- over I read a modern detec- tive story just another sign that my generation is going the way of those who think there hasn't been a funny man sinco Charlie Chaplin? Or is there something lacking in these contemporary whodun- nits, oven the most ingenious of them?
I have just read a batch of the latest in the hope of spot- ting a successor to the old masters. I have been disap- pointed.
THE RULES
Technically, there has been no lowering of slandards. Today's practitioners of the art observe the rules inid down by Conan Doyle, Sayers, and Van Dine. And how well they wrile! The best of them are no mere purveyors of thrills.
GORDON SEWELL hunts for a clue in a bunch of the new thrillers
now
They are novelista in their own right
How skilfully they contrive their problems! With what competence they coll the lariats of suspicion, now round this protagonist, that.
And yet....Let's face it: not one of them can create a more-than- cardboard delective. Their pocis, murderers murdorces, are in- teresting, complex, real. Their do- tectives are alock,
BUS.
Examples? Here are three deter- tive Inspectors, all slices off the same lost,
NO. 1: Detective Inspector Ilaz. lerigg in Michael Gilbert's "Close Quarters" (Hodder and Stoughton, 83. Od.). In solving the crossword puzzle problem of who killed tho verger of Molchester Cathedral, ho in "tireless, relentless, Implacable and dull. The most minor of the canons has more personality. And when he quotes a purple passage from Pater, it's all terribly embar- rassing.
а
head and a dry turn of phrase. Though his composure remains when corpsen pile up or disappear In the chromium-plated, gold and red-Incquered country-hound hotel, ke never establishes
himself AS more than a very efficient pico per- son--the only nico
in: person Maureen Sarafctd's chic “Dinner for None" (Nicholson and Watson, Bs. (d.).
TEAS
Yo
2
Dainty Tea Shoppe
་
DAINTY SNACKS
NO. 2: Inspector Cockrill, of the and bright eyed, a dusty little old Kent Constabulary: "Small, brown, It can, of course, be objected that these policemen are, at any rate, sparrow In n startlingly clean
nearer to reality than Sherlock panama hat, he was soon, sparrow- Holmes. Let old Aristotle like, at the centre of all interest and Dorothy Sayers, up-to-data version) nctivity, hopping and darting....in
answer that one: "If a detective search of crumbs of Information." such as Conan Doyle described be You've guessed? The author is impossible....it is better he should woman, Christianna Brand, and in be like that, since the artist ought to her new book, "Buddenly
improve on his model." at his ite sidency" Bodley Head, 78.
That, surely, in the point. The Od.)
detective of action we she kills off a kindly old
remember country
are larger than life: Lord Peter with SCIENCE SHORT: gentleman and throws suspicion on a houseful of attractive, squabbling his poetry and haberdashery; Holmes with his eccentricities, his grandchildren, A surefire situation. Miss Brand makes the atmosphere vanity and rudeness; Vanco with his of nervous irritation and hysterical
Picassos and his quotations from galety almost unbearable at times. Spengler's "Decline of the West." But never at the expense of the problem.
I'm prepared to endorse her publisher's claim that she has "join- ed the top flight of mystery story writers." But "Cockle" is not Д great detective.
NO. 3: Inspector Lane Parry, of the C.I.D. Public school, with a cool
NEW FUEL BRINGS ATOM POWER NEARER
by CHAPMAN UA, SCIENTISTS operating the
huge atomic furnaces at Han- ford, Washington State, have just aginounced a discovery which greatly increases the potenti- litics of atomie power for indus- trial purposes. They have devised
A METAL called thorium was extracted from the mineral'anut then bombarded
tiny with "bullets' known as neutrona Each thorium atom struck by a neutron automatically changed Inta a different métal called uranium 233, Thorium is useless as an atêmio Ivel, but uranium 233-4 close relative of the explosit uranium 233 can generato great quantities of heat, This can be harnessed to s turbine to produce electricity.
ATOMIC
{COLD GAS
that
SCIENTISTS believe uranium 233 can be used so that as fast as it burns it regenerates itself. Their argument: When rods of uranium 233 burn in a furnace they throw out milliona of neutrons. The furnace can be surrounded with thorium blocks to absorb those neutrons. so that more uranium 233 is nuto- matically made. Thus it may be possible to get the power from 1lb. of uranium 233, and at the BILINC time breed 3lb. of 11.
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
PINCHER
a means of changing' a mineral, which is so cheap that it has beehi used in making gas mantica, into an atomic fuel na powerful na the uranium 235 wiilch blasted Hiroshima in the war against Japan in August 1945.
SCIENTISTS 1 the Didcot Berks, alom station are working on a project to "breed" the new fuck from thorjum. If they suc- ceed the day when atomic energy can be used to power factories. heat homer and drive electric trains will be brought years nearer. "I breeding ta lesible there is every reason to belleve that atomic energy can play a very important part in power production." says Oxford atom expert Professor M. B. L. Pryce.
TOO SLIGHT
I thought I hnd discovered a like- ly candidate for this select company in Gervase Fen. He is an Oxford professor of English literature (although he never odmund Cris-
pect that his creator," pin, in a
I aus-
a don, too. His Oxford background in "Swan Song" (Gollancz, Bs. Od.) is so au- thentic that Fen, putting down his tankard, remarks: "There goes C. S. Lewis. It must be Tuesday,"
Fen has pleasantly frivolous streak.
ikeable fellow, The sort of professor who, between lectures and crime cases, finds time to act as a foreign affairs commentator and take part in radio quizzes.
But Fen, as a detective, is too slight a figure to set beside the mas- lers. That, I think, is becauso "Swan Song" is a good novel first, a puzzle-solver second.
Finally, here is a detective who really is different Percival Wilde's "P. Moran, Operative" (Gollancz 8s. 0.). He tells his own story in Damon Runyon-style letters to the Chlef Inspector of the Acme International Detective Correspondence School,
But though Pete is deducting, which he can do casy, because it is Its nature, I am thinking he is not a regular Great Detective.
Which is a pity. Pete's fun.
A
THE DANGER
NO HEAVY {MANUAL WORKERS
PLEASE
PRESSED SKULLS OF INDIANS
BY PAUL F. ELLIS Scientists at the Smithsonian In- stitution are studying a strange skull deformation prncilsed by Indians of Mexico and parts of the south- western United States A few centuries before the white man went to America.
The deformation consisted of a marked flattening of the top of the head at the back, by deliberate pressure applied to the heads of infants.
12
Such a technique, it is believed, produced what in described "three-horned
men." About 100 years ago, a French anthropologist reported finding such a skull on Cruz, the Island, of Sacrifices, near Vern
Since then, Smithsonian scientists point out, no other specimens have quite reached the three-homed stage, but some of the individuals must have presented a weird appearance.
Peaked Head
In some cases, the front of the skull alsu was flattened, producing
a high, peaked head.
In
studies,
connection with
Dr the
And that is danger. For if nice young men from Scotland Yard mark the decline of the deductive method, Pete is its fell.
"P. Moran, Operative" is n warn- ing to welters of serious detectiva stories. After such guying they must be more careful.
I[
they want their fables to be acceptable,
must they
give us powerfully individual characters in
the
Holmes-Vance-Wimsey tradi- tion. Or, better still, create a com- pletely new sort of person for the mister mind. That is what Ches- terton did when be thought of Father Brown.
Elementary, my dear Watson.
Smithsonian
the new
T Dalc Stewart, curator of physical anthropology, has been examining some skulls from Utah. The skulls, he reports, have attened backs.. Ho belleves, however, that the flattened skulls did not result from of "cradle boards" pressuro against the heads of individuals when they were small bables,
Wie
Thla so-called lambold flat- tening"," Dr Stewart says, "hardly can have been otherwise than de- liberate, owing to some distorted idea of physical beauty or to a desire to differentlate clearly mem- 'bers of certain tribes."
"If It's Art, Sign It!"
By KEMP STARRETT
BEER HOT DOGS
M. Augao Oreill
ANY WORK OF ART LIKE THIS OLGHT TO BE SIGNED.
T
FOR SALE
TT
ITS BETTER ART "THAN SOME WE'VE SEEN AND SHOULD BE SIGNED.
WILL THERE BE ANYTHING
LEFT FOR
WHEN IT'S NECESSARY TO USE THE TODINE, YOU MAY AS WELL PUT A LITTLE ART INTO IT ....."AND, OF COURSE, SIGH IT.
Ledger Syndicate
SCULPTORS SHOULD SIGN, AND LEGIBLY SO WE'LL KNOW WIOMTO BLAME..... ALSO THE TITLE SHOULD BE
·DISTINCT SO WELL KNOW ITS TIE SOULS AWAKENING
AND NOT A BUSTED BUGGY CUSHION.
WHEN IT'S FINISHED SIGN IT: YOU
MAY HAVE TO LIVE IN IT.
DONT FORGET DIÁT, EVEN IF YOU'VE MADE
A WORK OF ART, AND ARTIFICE, OF THAT INCOME TAX RETURN IT HAS TO BE SIGNED,
AND SIGH THAT PIE. THE PUBLICITY WONT LAST VERY LONG IF THE DIE IS GOOD.
BUT SIGN IT ANGRASS ITS HIGH. ART.
JOHN Q.FLOPD
1937
THE
ARCHITECT SHOULD BE
COMPELLED TO CIGN THOSE
AVFUL BUILDINGS AND EVEN
•BRIDGES