Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Spike or Victoria College Review October 1929

Half Hours With Science Students

page 19

Half Hours With Science Students

The other day as I sat contemplatively chewing ham sandwiches in the Cafeteria and thinking deeply upon the theory of foreign exchange as expounded in Professor M——'s delightful treatise, one of my zoological friends joined me and began to converse in the earnest fashion of all good science students.

"You simply must take zoo."

"Take the zoo! Certainly not, what would Mr. Troup say?"

"I meant zoology" (with pained dignity). "Oh!"

"It's a wonderful subject, so instructive—"

"It must be."

"——and all about the jolliest things, evolution, heredity and crayfishes. There was a man called Mendel——"

"Any relation of Handel or Ethel M. Dell?"

"Look here, for goodness sake, stop interrupting——"

"I wasn't, I was being intelligent!"

"You weren't. Commerce students are not allowed to show intelligence. To continue this man Mendel was clever——"

"Fancy!"

"——and he took——"

"This College is going to the dogs, now that they are allowing thievery to be taught."

"Wait a minute, did he come after Darwin or was it before No matter, he said that if you took the lenses out of rabbits' eyes and put them into hens, then the rabbits, or maybe the chickens get weak eyes."

"Oh, too foul!"

"Then he said we have all got dominant and recessive characteristics—"

"How interesting!"

"——so if a blue-eyed person marries a brown-eyed person——"

"Wedding bells, eh! They are always tinkling at this College."

"Shut up and listen, then for every four children, three will have brown eyes and one blue——"

"But what if there are six?"

"——because brown is dominant and blue recessive."

"Have you heard that Mussolini is dominating Italy?"

"We have found that there are jolly little things called 'amoeba.'"

"Never met him."

"——they are like jelly-fish and move along by pouring themselves into themselves."

"I say, that sounds fishy."

page 20

"——and after millions of years they grew into men."

"Were they brought up on Virol?"

"Try not to be fatuous. You know it is very wonderful to think that all the world was once full of amoeba and of course you realise. Great Scott, is that the time. Goodbye, you do know all about it now, don't you?"

"Oh yes, thanks awfully!"

But do I? At any rate, I do know this. First, Mendel is no relation to Handel or Ethel M. Dell. Second, in zoology, you can have four-eyed children, three blue and one brown. Third, the world was full of jelly-fish that became men. So why worry to inquire into that subject any more.

—A.M.D.