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Editor: Francis Burnand

PUNCH,

VOL. 104.

January 21, 1893.

CONVERSATIONAL HINTS FOR YOUNG SHOOTERS.

THE KEEPER.

Of the many varieties of keeper, I propose, at present, to consider only the average sort of keeper, who looks after a shooting, comprising partridges, pheasants, hares, and rabbits, in an English county. Now it is to be observed that your ordinary keeper is not a conversational animal. He has, as a rule, too much to do to waste time in unnecessary talk. To begin with, he has to control his staff, the men and boys who walk in line with you through the root-fields, or beat the coverts for pheasants. That might seem at first sight to be an easy business, but it is actually one of the most difficult in the world. For thorough perverse stupidity, you will not easily match the autochthonous beater. Watch him as he trudges along, slow, expressionless, clod-resembling, lethargic, and say how you would like to be the chief of such an army. He is always getting out of line, pressing forward unduly, or hanging back too much, and the loud voice of the keeper makes the woods resound with remonstrance, entreaty, and blame, hurled at his bovine head. After lunch, it is true, the beater wakes up for a little. Then shall you hear WILLIAM exchanging confidences from one end of the line to the other with JARGE, while the startled pheasant rises too soon and goes back, to the despair of the keeper and the guns. Then, too, are heard the shouts of laughter which greet the appearance of a rabbit, and the air is thick with the sticks that the joyous, beery beaters fling at the scurrying form of their hereditary foe. It is marvellous to note with what a venomous hatred the beater regards the bunny. Pheasant or partridge he is careless of; even the hare is, in comparison, a thing of nought, but let him once set eyes on a rabbit, and his whole being seems to change. His eye absolutely flashes, his chest heaves with excitement beneath the ancient piece of sacking that protects his form from thorns. If the rabbit falls to the shot, he yells with exultation; if it be missed, an expression of morose and gloomy disappointment settles on his face, as who should say, "Things are played out; the world is worthless!"

All these characteristics are the keeper's despair; though, to be sure, he has staunch lieutenants in his under-keepers; and towards the end of the day he can always count on two sympathising allies in the postman and the policeman. These two never fail to come out in the afternoon to join the beaters. It is amusing to watch the demeanour of the beaters in the policeman's presence. Some of them, it is possible, have been immeshed by the law, and have made the constable's acquaintance in his professional capacity. Others are conscious of undiscovered peccadilloes, or they feel that on some future day they may be led to transgress rules, of which the policeman is the sturdy embodiment. None of them is, therefore, quite at his best in the policeman's presence. Their attitude may be described as one of uneasy familiarity, bursting here and there into jocular nervousness, but never quite attaining the rollicking point. You may sometimes take advantage of this feeling to let off a joke on a beater. Select a stout, plethoric one, and say to him, "Mind you keep your eye on the policeman, or he'll poach a rabbit before you can say knife." This simple inversion of probabilities and positions is quite certain to "go." A hesitating smile will first creep into the corners of the beater's eye. After an interval spent in grappling with the jest, he will become purple, and finally he will explode.

But the head-keeper recks not of these things. All the anxiety of the day is his. If, for one reason or another, he fails to show as good a head of game as had been expected, he knows his master will be displeased. If the beaters prove intractable, the birds go wrong, but the burden of the host's disappointment falls on the keeper's shoulders. His are all the petty worries, the little failures of the day. The keeper is, therefore, not given to conversation. How should he be, with all these responsibilities weighing upon him? Few of those who shoot realise what the keeper has gone through to provide the sport. Inclement nights spent in the open, untiring vigilance by day and by night, a constant and patient care of his birds during the worst seasons, short hours of sleep, and long hours of tramping, such is the keeper's life. And, after all, what a fine fellow is a good keeper. In what other race of men can you find in a higher degree the best and manliest qualities, unswerving fidelity, dauntless courage, unflinching endurance of hardship and fatigue, and an upright honesty of conduct and demeanour? I protest that if ever the sport of game-shooting is attacked, one powerful argument in its favour may be found in the fact that it produces such men as these, and fosters their staunch virtues. Think well of all this, my young friend, and do not vex the harassed keeper with idle and frivolous remarks. But you may permit yourself to say to him, during the day, "That's a nice dog of yours; works capitally."

"Did you have much trouble breaking him?"

"Lor' bless you, Sir, no. He took to it like a duck to the water. Nothing comes amiss to him. You stand there, Sir, and you'll get some nice birds over you. They mostly breaks this way."

That kind of conversation establishes good relations, always an important thing. Or you may hint to him that he knows his business better than the host, as thus:--

"I must have been in the wrong place that last beat. Not a single bird came near me."

"Of course you were, Sir. I knew how it would be. I wanted you fifty yards higher up, but Mr. CHALMERS, he would have you here. Lor, I've never known birds break here. Now then, you boys, stop that chattering, or I sends you all home. Seem to think they're out here to enjoy theirselves, instead of doing as I tells 'em. Come, rattle your sticks!"

Thus are the little beaters and the stops admonished.

FROM A MODERN ENGLISH EXAMINATION-PAPER

THE COMING OF THE BOGEYS.

MRS. R.'S nephew read out an announcement to the effect that Messrs. MACMILLAN were about to publish Lord CARNARVON'S "Prometheus Bound." "Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. R.'s excellent aunt. "That's very vague. Doesn't it say how it's to be bound?--whether in calf or vellum?"

LAPSUS LINGUAE.

Never we dreamt of this horrible blundering! Up to the present, we cheerfully spoke Quite unaware of our errors, nor wondering How many rules in each sentence we broke.

Now we can scarcely pronounce the admission that Grammar and parsing we freely neglect, Scarcely can dare to make humble petition that Someone or other will cure this defect!

Often we err in the use of each particle, Seldom observe where our adverbs belong, Wholly misplace the indefinite article, In our subjunctives go hopelessly wrong!

"SOUNDS RATHER LIKE IT."--In France the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has gone to the DEVELLE.

THE HAYMARKET HYPATIA.

"Where they goes, or how they fares, Nobody knows and nobody cares."

CHEAP LAW IN THE CITY.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

ROBERT WITH THE CHILDREN AT GILDHALL.

Well, I don't quite kno as I quite hunderstans what's bin a goin on in our old Sacred Gildall, or weather it's all xactly what sum of our werry sollemest Holldermen, or ewen our werry anshent Depputys, might admire; but I must say, for myself, that too thowsand more owdashus boys, and larfing gals, I never seed nor herd than I did on Toosday larst, for about fore hours, in old Gildall aforesaid!

Jest to show how the werry best, aye and the werry wisest on us, gets carried away by the site of swarms of appy children a enjoying thereselves, as praps they never did afore, I feels myself compelled to state, that our good kind Lord MARE was so delighted to see sich swarms of appy children all round him and looking up to him so appy and so grateful, that, jest afore it was time to go, he acshally told 'em a most wunderful story all about two great Giants as lived in the rain of King LUD, on Ludgate Hill. I was that estonished when he begun, as to amost think that GOG and MAGOG, as stood on both sides of him, would begin to grin, but that was, of course, only a passing delushun. But didn't all the children lissen with open mouths when the Lord MARE told 'em that one of the Giants had too heads, and the other three! and that a very good boy named JACK managed to kill 'em both!

And so all was ended but the cheering, and that the pore delited children kept up till they all marched out, smiling and appy, and wishing as such glorious heavenings was in store for them in grand old Gildall for many, many years to come, and with sitch a Lord Mare to see as everything was done as it had been done that jolly heavening.

ROBERT.

TRANSFORMATION SCENE.--Dear Sir, I see by the paper that "Mr. EDMUND YATES has been made a J. P." Odd! What does "J. P." stand for? Oh, of course, "JOE PARKINSON." But does "E. Y." on becoming "J. P." cease to be "MOI-M?ME"?--Yours, M. MUDDLE.

THE LATEST TRADE OUTRAGE!

She once was a proud reigning beauty, who now is a maid all forlorn, As hopeless and helpless, and tearful as RUTH midst the alien corn. Or poor Proserpine snatched by dark Pluto afar from the day and the light; Torn away--like this maiden--from Ceres, and wrapt--like this maiden--in night.

Perchance she was just a bit haughty in virginal safety and pride; No rival too near her high throne, Prince FORTUNIO aye at her side; But now a poor PERDITA, prone at the feet of her foes she lies bound, And that melodramatic thud-thud draweth near--a most menacing sound!

Her First Appearance.

"THE SITUATION IN EUROPE."--Monte Carlo .

ETHNOGRAPHICAL ALPHABET.

THE LAY OF THE LAUREATE.

Gracious Heavens! When I think of all the cackle I have turned out for the heroes of the Halls!!! No wonder that the task I've now to tackle-- Something new and smart for TRICKSY TRIP!--appals. I have tried three several songs--and had to "stock 'em," She's imperative; her last Great Hit's played out, And she wants "a new big thing that's bound to knock 'em." And "she'd like it by return of post!"--No doubt!!!

iron-wire nerve model." Over a hundred years ago, it had been observed that visible waves were produced on the surface of a piece of iron submerged in nitric acid when and where the iron is touched by a piece of zinc. After a short period of apparent fatigue, the wire recovers and can again support a wave when stimulated. Major support for the idea that such impulses are in fact directly related to peripheral nerve impulses came from Lillie around 1920. Along an entirely different line, various persons have noted the morphological and dynamic similarity of dendrites in brain and those which sometimes grow by electrodeposition of metals from solution. Gordon Pask , especially, has pointed to this similarity and has discussed in a general way the concomitant possibility of a physical model for the persistent memory trace.

For review articles see: Lillie , Franck .

A few experimenters have subsequently pursued the iron-wire nerve-impulse analogy further, hoping thereby to illuminate the mechanisms of nerve excitation, impulse transmission and recovery, but interest has generally been quite low. It has remained fairly undisturbed in the text books and lecture demonstrations of medical students, as a picturesque aid to their formal education. On the outer fringes of biology, still less interest has been displayed; the philosophical vitalists would surely be revolted by the idea of such models of mind and memory, and at the other end of the scale, contemporary computer engineers generally assume that a nerve cell operates much too slowly to be of any value. This lack of interest is certainly due, in part, to success in developing techniques of monitoring individual nerve fibers directly to the point that it is just about as easy to work with large nerve fibers as it is to work with iron wires. Under such circumstances, the model has only limited value, perhaps just to the extent that it emphasizes the role of factors other than specific molecular structure and local chemical reactions in the dynamics of nerve action.

When we leave the questions of impulse transmission on long fibers and peripheral junctions, however, and attempt to discuss the brain, there can be hardly any doubt that the development of a meaningful physical model technique would be of great value. Brain tissue is soft and sensitive, the cellular structures are small, tangled, and incredibly numerous. Therefore ), " ... physiologists hope that after having learned a lot about nerve-impulses in the nerves they will be able to go on to study how these impulses interact when they reach the brain. , we must not assume that we shall understand the brain only in the terms we have learned to use for the nerves. The function of nerves is to carry impulses--like telegraph wires. The functions of brains is something else." But, confronted with such awesome experimental difficulties, with no comprehensive mathematical theory in sight, we are largely limited otherwise to verbal discourses, rationales and theorizing, a hopelessly clumsy tool for the development of an adequate understanding of brain function. A little over ten years ago Sperry said, "Present day science is quite at a loss even to begin to describe the neural events involved in the simplest form of mental activity." This situation has not changed much today. The development, study, and understanding of complex high-density cellular structures which incorporate characteristics of both the Lillie and Pask models may, it is hoped, alleviate this situation. There would also be fairly obvious technological applications for such techniques if highly developed and which, more than any other consideration, has prompted support for this work.

Experiments to date have been devised which demonstrate the following basic physical functional characteristics:

Control of bulk resistivity of electrolytes containing closely-packed, poorly-conducting pellets Circulation of regenerative waves on closed loops Strong coupling between isolated excitable sites Logically-complete wave interactions, including facilitation and annihilation Dendrite growth by electrodeposition in "closed" excitable systems Subthreshold distributed field effects, especially in locally-refractory regions.

In addition, our attention has necessarily been directed to various problems of general experimental technique and choice of materials, especially as related to stability, fast recovery and long life. However, in order to understand the possible significance of, and motivation for such experiments, some related modern concepts of neurophysiology, histology and psychology will be reviewed very briefly. These concepts are, respectively:

Cellular structure in the central nervous system Short-term or "ephemeral" memory The synapse Inhibition Long-term memory traces or engram Spatially-diffuse temporal association and learning.

SOME CONTEMPORARY CONCEPTS

Since we are attempting to duplicate processes other than chemical, per se, we will forego any reference to the extensive literature of neurochemistry. It should not be surprising though if, at the neglect of the fundamental biological processes of growth, reproduction and metabolism, it proves possible to imitate some learning mechanisms with grossly less complex molecular structures. There is also much talk of chemical versus electrical theories and mechanisms in neurophysiology. The distinction, when it can be made, seems to hinge on the question of the scale of size of significant interactions. Thus, "chemical" interactions presumably take place at molecular distances, possibly as a result of or subsequent to a certain amount of thermal diffusion. "Electrical" interactions, on the other hand, are generally understood to imply longer range or larger scale macroscopic fields.

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