NOW AND then it happens that there simply isn't much news – but that never stops the media vacuum cleaner, which simply hoovers up a lower level of facts. Such a day was reflected in today's paper in 1929: several things were about to happen. The Spring Show was opening the next day; the London Letterwas reduced to noting that the queen was about to return a day earlier than planned from Bognor; and the "Irishman's Diary" was stretched to three columns about nothing much.
On days like that there’s always foreign news, of course; for one thing, the stock market in New York was still booming, and a plan was announced by the recently resigned “genius of General Motors”, John Jacob Raskob, to set up an investment trust for the workers of America to be valued at an astonishing five thousand million dollars to allow them to invest in the shares of leading companies.
When it came to looking for subjects on which to write editorials there were also few obvious topics, especially when seeking one for a third leader, which prompted someone to cast their eye over the whole wide world and alight on Madagascar.
A land of creatures unknown elsewhere in the world
The island of Madagascar does not push itself into our newspapers. It is out of the beaten track and its agricultural population of some three millions prospers quietly under French control. Yet the island’s remote past is mysterious; it teems with problems for the student of natural history, and some of these may be solved by a scientific expedition which is being launched under the joint auspices of French, British and American learning. Although Madagascar lies only three hundred miles from Africa, it has none of the larger quadrupeds which abound on that Continent.
On the other hand, it produced in remote times – as its fossils show – and still produces, creatures that are unknown elsewhere in the world. The aepyornis, the largest bird on record – it was ten feet high and its eggs were thirteen inches long - once lived in Madagascar.
Not the least delightful of Mr HG Wells’s short stories tells how a mariner, shipwrecked on a very small island, unearthed a very large egg in a cave, exposed it to the sun and soon found himself in the awkward company of a short-tempered aepyornis.
At one time also, Madagascar specialised in lizards seventy feet long, besides which the two East Indian dragons in the London “Zoo” would be mere tadpoles.
Today it is the headquarters of that curious animal, the lemur, whose nearest relations, now alive, are to be found in the Malay peninsula. Some of the extinct lemurs of Madagascar were as big as chimpanzees.
How may we explain the isolation of its animals from those of its close neighbour Africa, and their kinship with those of Asia? One theory revives the famous legend of Atlantis – a submerged continent that formerly connected Africa with Asia. A modern theory – Atlantis is as old as Plato – is mentioned by Mr HC Bailey in the Daily Telegraph. It is the theory that continents float.
If we could believe that Madagascar, India and, perhaps, Australia once floated together, many problems concerning the distribution of plants and animals might be solved; and by a like assumption, the existence of coal in the Antarctic regions might be explained.
At any rate, lovers of romance as well as men of science will hope for fruitful results from the new expedition to Madagascar.
For other stories making the news on this day in 1929 go to http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1929/0507/Pg008.html#Ar00805