MARGINAL COMIVIENTS
By SALLY GRAVES AN American investigator recently produced a boOk which shook plain effipiricists' like myself. But the topic of extra-sensory perception becathe a generat one and even trickled into the villages of the Home Counties. Village society noted, that Colonel Taylor's bridge sense and Mrs. Oppenheimer's remarkable luck at treasure-hunts were due, not to rational processes or sordid guile, but to something apart and rather special. Mr. Dunne had recently explained Mr. Fawcett's striking series of betting successes. But a few days back, some- thing occurred which defied solution along either of these lines. For at a party where, twentieth-century fashion, adults played childish games with enthusiasm, young Taylor, as Blind.,Man, , continually and efficiently sought out the elder Miss 0i)penheimer. And there was no question 'of squinting or peeking, for I tied the bandage myself. Now a certain Mr. Flick has conic forward with a solution. This man, certainly one of Fame's favourite nurslings; even stated, at a recent congress of opticians held at OXford, that lie had proved the existence of through-sight. Mr. Flick deposed that lie had filled two cardboard lids with cotton-wool,, and tied them round a young woman's eyes. She was able to read and describe an illustrated book of natural history. Later on, Mr. Kuda Bux stated that he could see down his nose.
This discovery offers possibilities of a different kind: Presumably his field of vision was as limited as Words- worth's Michael's, as constricted as that of a smell- hound or professional mourner. Yet this narrow and downward vision could be put to good uses, For without adopting the slouch of an unfortunate gutter- seeker, We would be able to take notice of the innumerable coins, rings and broocheS that must be dropped daily in London streets, And this without forsaking our Johnny head-in-air posture. Naturally moustaches would impair the efficiency of nasal vision. The new' generation would be a hundred per cent clean-shaven. And a new type of spectacle, as neat and unobtrusive as modern appliances for 'the deaf, would be invented. Finally, the shock to racial theories would be immense. The snub-nosed races—the triumphant rhinobrachs—would survive in the struggle to maintain a general efficiency. It would be the age of the Hottentot and Bushman. The Boman and the Hebrew noses would be relegated, to the limbo of antique enriosities. Martial would have written truer than he knew when he wrote : " Tongilianus habet nasum scio, non nego ; sed jam • Nil praeter nasum Tongilianus habet."
Perhaps Mr: Shandy's father, with his ace of club nose, would be the culture-hero of the future snub-nosed EMpire —either he or one or other of the Dickens characters who foreshadowed the art of winking by putting the finger to the side of the nose.
There' has been unhappy misuse Of thiSAelicate organ of perception, but 'a time, maybe, will come when it will express more than mere scorn or pride. We shall turn up our noses at a work 'of art to get a better view of it. We shall cock a snook by way of polite recognition. And we will certainly give a sneeze for objects of concern. But the age of rhinologists, rhinaestbetics, and rhin- oramas is far off yet. VVe need not yet look down our noses at the possibilities of common eyesight, or Mr. Flick's new penetrative vision. The pleasures of through and far-sightedness await us still, for " If it wasn't for myopia
We (mild see to Ethiopia "
when Mr. Flick has disposed of the houses in between. Fortunately for war correspondents, our " wision," like Sam " is limited."
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