Letters to the Pe Green Answer Man

Dear Pea Green Answer Man:

How often do deer shed their horns?

G. White Hunter, Waco

Dear WH:

Deer shed their horns once a year. This occurs soon after the breeding season. The tines or snags of the antlers are called points. A deer with a set of antlers having four points on each side is called (in the flatlands)  an eight-point deer, and so on. The horns begin as single points on the young deer during the second season and generally increase in size and number of points with each renewal, although the increase in size and number of points is not strictly progressive. For that reason it is not possible, as popularly supposed, to tell the age of a deer by the number of points on its antlers. The growth of the antlers is dependent upon a number of circumstances, such as the physical condition of the animal and its virility. As the deer grows old there is a tendency for the horns to become smaller with fewer points. Reindeer differ from other deer in that the females also have horns.

Pea Green the Answer Man

Dear Pea Green Answer Man:

Why are dummy clocks set at 8:18?

Anwar, Montrose

Dear Anwar:

The hands on dummy clocks and watches used by jewelers for advertising purposes almost invariably point to eighteen minutes past eight. There is a popular belief that the man who painted the first of these wooden clocks and watches had just heard of the death of Abraham Lincoln and that he painted the hands to perpetuate the fatal hour. According to one version of the story, the hands commemorate the exact time of his assassination. As a matter of fact Lincoln was shot at 10:10 in the evening and died about 7:30 the next morning. But the belief is more conclusively disproved by the fact that these wooden watches and clocks, with the hands pointing to eighteen minutes past eight were hanging as signs in front of jewelry shops long before the assassination of Lincoln. The real reason for so placing the hands is obvious. It is the most symmetrical arrangement possible for the hands, being pleasing to the eye, and at the same time leaving the greatest possible amount of space for advertising matter, such as the name of the jeweler. It will be noted that at 8:18 the hands are the same distance from the 12 and the 6 and two-thirds of the space on the dial is above the hands.

Pea Green the Answer Man

Dear Pea Green Answer Man,

Are there real mermaids?

DC, Gunnison

Dear DC:

Mermaids are mythical beings of the sea supposed to have the form of a woman above the waist and that of a fish below. According to mythology, mermaids have great personal charms with which they lure amorous men to destruction in the deep. There is a slight physical basis for the myth. Certain marine animals resemble human beings when seen at a distance in certain attitudes. In some northern countries seals have a way of lifting their heads from the water with a human, intelligent look in their faces, and they hug their young to their bosoms much like a human mother. When Henry Hudson was on a voyage between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla in 1608, he reported that one morning in June two of his sailors saw a mermaid who came close to the side of the vessel and gazed at them intently. Her face and breasts were those of a woman, but below she was a fish as big as a halibut and colored like a speckled mackerel. If the two sailors were not telling a yarn it is probable that they saw a seal, an animal then little known to Europeans. A few years later Captain Richard Whitbourne reported seeing a mermaid in St. John’s harbor on the coast of Newfoundland. Whitbourne, like Hudson’s sailors, was no doubt the victim of careless observation. Walruses seen dimly at a distance often appear like mermaids. Durongs or seacows as well as manatees, create a similar effect as they stand up in weedy shallows along the coast. The mother holds her young to her breast with one of her flippers, suggesting a mother and her baby. Many of the stories about mermaids were probably invented by sailors to amuse their families. It is not uncommon to find credulous people even today who believe in the actual existence of mermaids, and fake mermaids are frequently exhibited at circuses and other shows.

Pea Green the Answer Man

Dear Pea Green Answer Man:

What kind of fruit is used in making prunes?

El Viejo, Lake City

Dear El Viejo:

Prunes are made from certain varieties of plums. Popularly the word prune is applied to a dried plum of a certain type, or to a fresh plum capable of being dried in the sun without fermenting or souring when the pit is not removed. Hence plum trees producing such plums are often called prune trees. Only a few varieties of plums are capable of being converted into prunes; most plums, if dried with the pits in them, would ferment and sour in the process. Many people believe that prunes and plums belong to different species; they are merely varieties of Prunus domestica, the species to which all common plums belong. On this subject the late Luther Burbank wrote the author as follows: “All prunes are plums. Very few plums are prunes in the common acceptation of the term. The difference in plums and prunes is: Any plum which has sufficient sugar in its substance to dry without souring is called a prune. In France all plums are called prunes. So in the language of France all plums are prunes, while here only those that will dry in the sun without souring are prunes.”

Pea Green the Answer Man

Dear Pea Green Answer Man:

Did Washington receive a salary for his services during the Revolution?

Sweet Sally, Silverton

Dear Sally:

Washington refused to accept anything for his personal services during the Revolutionary War. He did, however, accept reimbursement for his personal expenses. On his way to Annapolis, where he resigned his commission to congress on December 23, 1783, General Washington stopped at Philadelphia and gave the Comptroller of the Treasury a neatly written manuscript which contained a detailed and accurate statement of his expenses in the public service from the time he took command of the army at Cambridge. The total sum was $64,315.00.

Pea Green the Answer Man