Walkerville Collegiate Institute - Blue and White Yearbook (Windsor, Ontario Canada)

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BLUE AND WHITE i- ;! e e I- r. a e I- e e e y e a x i- b )f h it ;o a •n li¬ ra is v s. m s le r- ai iy so k- •d ir iy it es id •t- iy fanned the air. The wing motion was so extremely fast that a thunder-like sound was produced. The male bird is the one which does the drumming, and usually in the spring, during the mating season. Each drumming period lasts about five seconds. Since this bird is the scratching type it lives and feeds its young, which at the age of two hours, are already lively little furry balls of vitality, almost en¬ tirely upon insects. In winter, when this type of food is not obtainable, they eat wild grain, poplar, and cedar buds. The ruffed grouse is an entirely beneficial bird and does no damage to farm crops. The pheasant, another bird of the scratching type, is by far the most beau¬ tiful among Canadian game birds. The male bird will often weigh four pounds. This bird belongs to a large Old World order which has no American repres¬ entative. Because this bird has taken so well to domestication, it has been carr¬ ied to every part of the world. Fortun¬ ately, a specimen of the order known as the ring-neck pheasant, thrived in the warmer parts of Canada and the United States, and is considered one of the most popular game birds of these countries. These birds, as I have previously stated, are very magnificently plumed. The male is by far more beautiful than the female. He has a gracefully pointed tail of about fifteen inches in length. The back is a beautiful mixture of black, cream, maroon and emerald green with metallic sheens. The breost is a solid sienna with metallic reflections and black-tipped feather edges. The abdo¬ men is purple-black. The head and neck are steel black with green metallic lus¬ tre. Patches about the eyes are red, and the crown of the head is greenish ochre streaked with fine white lines. The black head and neck ends in a significant white collar. The long, gracefullv pointed tail is a dull olive-ochre, barred heavily with jet. The female is entirely unlike the male. She is considerably smaller and is mottled in colour. Her colours blend so perfectly with her surroundings of dried grass and fallen leaves, that if she re¬ mains motionless she is invisible to an inexperienced eye at a distance of ten feet. Since the pheasant is a large bird and has a comparatively small wing sur¬ face, it refrains from taking long flights. I don’t want you to think that this bird cannot fly; he most certainly can. He has a maximum speed of about seventy miles per hour, and such powerful wings that this speed is attained when the bird is only a few feet off the ground. A pheasant does not often fly farther than eight hundred yards. Greater dis¬ tances are likely to cause heart failure. Since he is a poor flier, he often relies upon his legs to carry him away from danger. A pheasant can run faster than the average fifteen-year old boy. Pheasants sleep and nest in swamps, and feed in neighbouring fields. There are from twelve to twenty eggs in a nest, each about half the size of a hen’s egg. They are green-grey in colour. At the end of twenty-eight days of incub¬ ation, during which time the eggs are kept by the mother at about 100 degrees fahrenheit, they gradually split open, exposing little brown chicks which re¬ semble big bumble bees ready to face the wiles of an evil world with the help of a powerful, hard-fighting mother. I have found these two birds the most interesting of the birds I have studied. One is a native of Canada, the other an alien, but both are magificent specimens of the tvpcal game bird. —George Patillo, 1.3-C I have a car. It never skids, It never breaks down. It never gets a puncture. It never falters on steep grades, It never gets in a collision or accident— Gee, I wish I could start it! Page Twenty five Tv i 1 77- r UDllC -L iDrar

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BLUE AND WHITE realize that music was not for amuse¬ ment only, but that it was a self-con¬ tained art. Being human, he did not reach his ideals, but he strove after them. It was beyond his power to obtain a fellowship of artists because of his egotism. He considered Richard Wagner most important and this brought to death the idea of fellowship. Wagner had his humorous side. One night he conducted a brilliant symph¬ ony before an equally brilliant audience. To the amazement and shock of the peo¬ ple, he did not use a score. Wagner was reprimanded for this, but he said that he conducted better without the hindr¬ ance of a score. However, he had to pro¬ mise that the next time he would not do such an atrocious thing. Well and good! On the night of the next concert. Wagner conducted with the score be¬ fore him. Everyone sang his praises. He had never done so well before or con¬ ducted so brilliantly. However! what they did not know was that Wagner had had the score upside down and the mus¬ ic before him had been in no remote way connected with the music he had con¬ ducted. Wagner left behind him an outstand¬ ing heritage. His operas! At the time of his life, his music was not fully apprec¬ iated. After his death, the effect of his work was tremendous. He influenced many smaller composers. The most im¬ portant of these was Engelbert Hump- endinck whose opera “Hansel and Gret- el” is loved. Wagner’s operas exhaust the human emotions. There is his most loved one “Der Meistersinger von Nu- remburg” which is a comedy. There is the passionate love story “Lohengrin”. These are only a few of his wonderful works, all majestic, soul-stirring and beautiful. Wagner, as a man, annoys me. Wag¬ ner as a musician delights me. Wagner, as a whole, is the most interesting per¬ son I have ever known. —Anne Tukkunen. GALLIFORMES The Ruffed Grouse, or Spruce Part¬ ridge, and the Pheasant are two of Can¬ ada’s most interesting gallinaceous birds The Ruffed Grouse is a large game bird which lives almost entirely in the heavily wooded parts of Canada. Its col¬ ours are for the most part wood-brown and grey. Soft black features make a ruff at the side of the neck. The female and the male are much the same in col¬ ouration except for the tail. The male has a very beautiful, long tail, which he spreads like a fan when he flies. The basic colour of the tail is brown, finely vermiculated with black. The ends of the feathers are tipped with white. This beautiful, large bird is called a partridge by most Canadian sportsmen. Since it has learned to be extremely wa¬ ry, it is considered one of the best up¬ land game birds. It has the habit of ly¬ ing very closely in a heavy patch of cover, then bursting into the air with such a tremendous roar of wings, that its would-be tormentor is thrown into confusion. The ruffffed grouse is distinctly a bird of the woodland and is never seen far from this environment. Its drum¬ ming is well known to all frequenters of the northern bush. The drumming is a hollow, reverberating sound that ech¬ oes and re-echoes throughout the woods. It is peculiar in that the direction from which the sound comes is not easily dis¬ cernible. This drumming has been the subject of much controversy among or¬ nithologists, for although the actual drumming has been observed many times, yet the bird’s wings moved so quickly during the process that the nak¬ ed eye could not see whether the bird produced the sound by fanning the air with its wings, or whether it actually beat upon the object upon which it stood. Eventually, motion pictures were taken of a drumming grouse, and when they were reproduced in slow mot- tion it was found that the bird simply Page Twenty-four

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BLUE AND WHITE Facts About Songs Did you know that our national an¬ them, “God Save the King” was being sung on this continent years before the formation of the United States? Two hundred years ago, when Canada was French, the song was sung with French words—pledging allegiance to a French King. William Kirby, author of “The Gold¬ en Dog”, suggests that the English song is just a translation and revision of the old French song: “Grand Dieu; Sauvez le Roi! Grand Dieu; Sauvez le Roi! Sauvez le Roi! Que toujours glorieux, Louis Victorieux, Voye ses ennemis Toujours soumis!” English historians say that Britain’s grand National Anthem originated at the time of the Jacobite plotting against George the Second. In 1745, the song became quite pop¬ ular in England. It was sung at Drury Lane Theatre on the evening of Sept¬ ember 28. The following Monday, the notice of the performance in the Daily Advertiser read: “On Saturday night last, the audi¬ ence at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, were agreeably surprised by the gentle¬ men belonging to that house performing the anthem of ‘God Save our Noble King’. The universal applause it met with, being encored with repeated, huz¬ zas, sufficiently denoted in how just an abhorrence they hold the arbitrary schemes of our insidious enemies, and detest the despotic Attempts of Papal Power.” Incidentally, the music of “God Save the King” has been adopted by Switzer¬ land, Germany and the United States for national anthem purposes, although the Germans don’t use it any more. They prefer an old beer-garden tune. And did you know that there really Page Twenty-six was a man named John Bull, who lived rr back in the days of James the First and I who is credited by some authorities with originating the tune of “God Save the s King”? ' n Or did you know that “The Wearin’ a o’ the Green” was an especial favorite t of Queen Victoria’s? k Here are some other odd facts about songs: The Communism’s anthem “The v Red Flag” is sung to the tune of a well- v known hymn . . . The “Star Spangled ( Banner was written aboard an English ship by an American who was happy t over the fact that the English had not c been successful in their bombardment of Baltimore ... In the American Civil 1 War the Northern army marched to the 1 tune of “John Brown’s Body”, an old Southern air, while the soldiers of the South sang “Dixie”, a tune that orig- , inated in the North . . . “The Maple j Leaf” was written in two hours ... i People in Vienna were jailed, 100 years ago, for whistling the “Marseillaise”. —Alice Kolmis, XII-A WALKERVILLE I don’t know what the exact date was; all I know is that it was the first day of school, 1938. As is usual with first days of school, the weather was beautiful. The sun was brilliant, the air was soft and the sky was a postcard blue with soft downy clouds floating lazily through it. My spirits were not at all in accord with that perfect day. The only thing that was the least bit similar was that I felt blue—a very dull blue spotted with black clouds—not at all like the beauti¬ ful blue of the sky. Now I must admit that the first day of school is always somewhat pleasant to me. The reason for my gloom in 1938 was that I had just left Kennedy where I had spent two very happy High School years. I was to enter a new school, and the only person I knew was my sister, who wouldn’t be in my class anyway. I don’t make friends easily; those I do