The greater number of competitors gave the right answer—the Dead Sea, the density of the intensely salt water of which is so great that the human body will not sink in it. A good number, however, gave the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic, the remarkable feature there being the presence of an enormous mass of gulf weed. But it is the weeds that are thick there, not the water, and we said, “water so thick.” In the same way the girls who mentioned the Arctic Sea because of the ice should have taken note that we did not speak about “ice so thick.”
8. What are the characteristics of the music of Chopin?
Music being a girl’s subject, we naturally looked for good answers to this question. Good they were, the marked features of the music of this “bold and proud poetic spirit” being well indicated—his romance and sentiment, his refined harmony, his care to avoid commonplaces, his triumphs in the technical treatment of the pianoforte, and many other points illustrating how, as someone says, “he spoke of new things well worth hearing and found new ways of saying such things.”
9. Who is the greatest poetess the world has ever seen?
There was room here for differences of opinion. Sappho, Mrs. Browning, Vittoria Colonna, Christina Rossetti, Jean Ingelow and Mrs. Hemans all found advocates, but the majority said Sappho, whilst Mrs. Browning made a good second. Certainly, Sappho, “the tenth muse,” has the advantage in world-wide fame. To quote a sensible competitor, “Perhaps the dimness of distant ages clinging to her and her poetry spread a romantic glamour over her works; still, duly considering all these points, we, though hesitatingly, concede the palm to Sappho.”
10. How is a rainbow a sign of bad weather in the morning, and a sign of good weather in the evening?
One of the last papers we looked at ventured on the assertion that this is a “popular delusion.” However, almost all our competitors were on the other side and gave reasons for the fact. It was a query that had been taken pains over. The reasons, it should be added, were in some cases not very firmly grasped, so it may be useful to everybody—the “popular delusion” competitor included—if we quote the following from the “Salmonia” of Sir Humphry Davy:—
“A rainbow can only occur when the clouds containing or depositing the rain are opposite to the sun; and in the evening the rainbow is in the east and in the morning in the west; and as our heavy rains in this climate are usually brought by the westerly wind, a rainbow in the west indicates that the bad weather is on the road by the wind to us; whereas the rainbow in the east proves that the rain in these clouds is passing from us.”
11. Has a besieged town ever been saved by a pig?
This was a stumbling-block. We are within the mark in saying that a hundred and fifty competitors did not answer at all. A good many others answered wrongly, and one girl frankly denied that such an incident ever took place. “A besieged town,” she says, “never has been saved by a pig.” The pig story we had in view in framing the question was connected with Taunton. When that town was besieged during the Civil War, the garrison of the Castle were at last reduced to a single pig. “As, however, they wished to persuade the besiegers that they were well off for provisions, they drove the solitary and unfortunate animal round the ramparts, pricking it occasionally to make it squeal. The enemy soon retired, naturally thinking there was no chance of starving out a garrison who had such an unlimited supply of bacon.”