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'Beans,' a Naturalist Sentenced To an Office, Has Zoo at Home
[[image-floating church with steeple]]
The floating church which navigates the canals in the Argentine delta country between the Parana and Uruguay Rivers. This picture was made by Correspondent Shippen as he passed in a government launch.

By W. H. Shippen, Jr.,
Star Staff Correspondent.
NEAR SAN FERNANDO, Province of Buenos Aires.--"Porroto" (Beans in English) doesn't want to work every day in an office. He wants to be a naturalist, a humanitarian, but his padre thinks otherwise. At this writing Porroto was showing up pretty regularly for toil.
He can't overdo things at the office, however, until the last finger that Pepita broke regains its strength. Pepita-Beans calls her Pepy for short-is a giant condor, with talons of steel built for freighting off a sheep.
"But Pepy is the lady, no?" cried Beans, scrambling into the "lady's" cage to help her climb his arm. "She don' mean evil when she break my fingers by mistake... all is forgive, eh, Pepy?" Pepy squawked and swung her beak down toward the ear of Beans. We were afraid she might have her master's ear in more ways than one, but not Beans.
Beans then took up to the puma's cage. The old friends put on a Clyde Beatty act. The puma was a big one and purred like 40 tomcats. It seemed a bit ominous to me, especially when the cat bared fangs and claws. Beans emerged whole, however.
A Young Zoo.
The next spot was Beans' private bear den. Two rather large brown beasts answered his call and licked his fingers through the bars. "Ah, the poor little prisoners!" said Beans. "They have lost their freedom because of the sweet tooth. Those bear adore sugar. In the dining room they break the cabinet with their little paws. They eat all the sugar. Now they are in jail. It is the order of my father!"
As we strolled over the lawn and through the informal gardens of the vast estate of Beans' father, Patagonian cavies scampered away, and oven birds set up a great clamor from cedars and eucalyptus trees. The cavies responded to the call of Beans and wild birds seemed unafraid in his presence.
"I wish I could show you my favorite," Beans said, "but he is gone. He was the little wild "pato." What do you say in English for pato? What do you say for the bird who is the cousin of Mickey Mouse? Dunold? Dunold Dok?"
"Donald Duck."
"Ah, yes, yes, yes! Donald Duck! My Donald is gone."
"What happened to him?"
"One day, in the spring, his frens pass over going to Patagonia. Donald fly away with his love!"
An Admirer of W. H. Hudson.
Beans, although young, and small of stature, was a pretty sturdy citizen, sun-burned, clean-cut and muscular-a horseman and a naturalist, who had ridden the wilds of Chaco to the north, and Patagonia to the south.
A student of natural history, Beans also is a collector of first editions. The works of W. H. Hudson are some of his favorites, "A Naturalist on the Amazon," "Purple Lands," (Hudson's story, written in maturity, of his memories as a youth on the Pampas), "Green Mansions," etc. Beans prefers to read these works in Spanish, and has them translated for his library. 
Beans' wife, a petite blond, might have stepped out of the pages of a [[new column]] fashion journal. When she joined us she was leading their young son, a fat, sun-burned infant whose doting grandfather had built him a private swimming pool in the patio, no bigger than a bath tub. Beans' wife asked her husband (in a quick aside) if the guests spoke English or French. The English which she took up was better than mine.
I, speaking only English, couldn't help but wonder how a child of her age could converse in three languages.
She told us that her son, aged 2, already was picking up a bit of English and French under the tutelage of his governess, although he howled-like a big Gaucho-when she threw too much English at him. He likes Spanish best.
Wanted: Mr. West.
"You are from North America?" asked the young mother. "Then perhaps you know a Mr. West? He if of New York. Are not most North Americans of New York?"
"Several million anyhow."
"Ah, then perhaps you know him. Mr. West was of New York. He was a photographer, I believe. My husband and I met him Chile. We were on our honeymoon.
"The photographer took many pictures of the mountain scenery. He had great appreciation of beauty. My husband and I bought a pancho we admired so much. Mr. West admired it even more, so my husband said, 'It is yours, Senor.'
"Mr. West promised to send us pictures from the States. Perhaps he has lost our address. Possibly he forgot us. He was such a busy man, and we were so young... not very important.
"If you see Mr. West, will you tell him where we live, please... we would so much like to have the photographs of Chile as it looked on our honeymoon."
We assured her that if we encountered Mr. West we would tell him.

Tomorrow: Lunching on Pheasant.
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Wolf's Deck Pacing Explained; He's Now Father of 'Quints'
Mother and Babies At Buenos Aires Zoo, Are Doing Nicely

By W. H. Shippen, Jr.,
Star Staff Correspondent.
BUENOS AIRES.-- We know now what made the Texas red world so restless that morning at sea when we found him pacing the deck of the Uruguay. He was about to become the father of quintuplets!
[[image-inset, W H. Shippen, jr.]]
The cubs arrived this morning at the local Zoo, and mother and babies are doing nicely, thank you! Director William M. Mann of the Washington, D.C., Zoo was delighted, as the had hoped to bring along a prolific pair whose descendants would stock the Zoos of South America.
The father wolf, about the size of a police dog, with longer teeth and stronger jaws, chewed and wrenched a wooden bar off his crate to escape on the freight deck. Dr. Mann was called out in the dawn to capture the fugitive. The wolf must have had a lot on his mind, however, for he showed no fight. Dr. Mann was able to drive and spank him back into an empty crate without so much as a toothmark to show for it.
Shows Consideration.
The father, it seemed to me, wasn't very considerate of the mother during her trying period. He chewed through a wire partition which separated them and bolted most of her food.
"He was seeing to it that mamma stuck to her diet!" Dr. Mann said. 
The gift animals are welcome additions to the big Zoo here. The buffalo pair is doing fine and the huge, bald eagles make quite a show.
Some of the smaller things were sent to La Plata. The Zoo director there, Dr. Carlos Marelli, is an old friend of Dr. Mann's. Both Zoos, I understand, are assembling a few surprises as gifts for the Washington Zoo.
The park in La Plata is a botanic as well as a zoogical show. There are palms and pines from all over the world, flowering shrubs, plants and vines, and an especially fine collection of cactus. The cactus types include one which made the original "barbed wire" defense for an army at war.
Raiders Incapacitated.
The cactus grows in tortuous, twisting lengths covered with inch-long spines which are barbed and detach themselves on touch. the Uruguayans spread this devil's own invention one night against an expected raid from the Paraguayans. The cactus made human pin cushions of the raiders, who were too busy for days to waste time on military activities.
There was a twinkles in the eye of Dr. Marelli as he related the incident. 
"Soldiers have no time to shoot people," he said, "after sitting on that cactus, no?"
The spines, like porcupine quills, are barbed to work into the flesh of the unfortunates who encounter them. They go on working long after barbed wire has quit.
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La Plata Senoritas Parade in Search Of Husbands
Tradition in Old Spain, Passeo Is Observed With Strict Decorum

By W. H. Shippen, Jr.,
Star Staff Correspondent.
LA PLATA--The senoritas strolled in circles while they turned their eyes in even more directions-looking for a husband!
Dusk had settled over the wide plaza of this provincial capital and the lights of the city fell upon an animated scene which had a subtle undercurrent of excitement.
There was a tang of fall in the air. Palm fronds rattled softly above wide promenades filled with the youth and beauty of La Plata. The "Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady" were out tonight, for it was a religious holiday and the occasion of another "passeo"- that vanishing tradition of Old Spain.
[[image-inset, W. H. Shippen, jr.]]
Young girls walked and skipped arm in arm, dressed in their finest, their hair elaborately done in the latest coiffures.
The wealthiest wore their jewels, and little shop girls sparkled with scarcely less animation in their imitations-ear pendants, rings, bracelets and pins.
Many Wear Blossoms.
Many girls wore blossoms in their hair. There were a surprising number of blonds for a aLtin city. The parade of feminine charm passed along tiled sidewalks between a double line of Argentine swains-young cynics who fingered their mustaches while they stared boldly at every pretty face.
Their polished black hair gleamed in the lights, their suits were immaculately press (for some reason, it costs a handful of pesos to get a suit cleaned here) and their bright ties carefully set in white collars.
The girls seemed blissfully unaware of the primary function of the passeo- matrimony. They strove for the ideal additude, one of gayety and care-free grace. Poise was at a premium. They acted as if they and the friends who formed their little groups were strolling down an uninhabited country lane, engrossed in their own conversation, their own trivial, but private, affairs.
Their quick, dark eyes took in everything-seeing, estimated, discarding. Their eyes traveled right through married men (I ought to know) and if they lingered upon a certain favorite the exchange was between two alone, and not obvious to the multitude.
Strictest Decorum Observed.
The whole affair is conducted along traditional lines of strictest decorum. In the old days it was the only opportunity of girls and men to see and estimate each other before their families arranged marriages. Here that necessity exists to a larger extent than in such metropolises as Buenos Aires.
The young men are not supposed to speak to the girls, although it is permissible to bow; nor are they allowed to meet a girl during the passeo, or to walk with her, or conduct her home.
"How does a young man meet a girl he sees at a passeo?" we asked our host, a native of the city who had conducted us about the plaza. an elderly man, and the father of a large family, he laughed and shook his head:
"Ah, there are many way-I ought to know! But mine is an old story. The young men of today know more ways, I have no doubt, than we old ones.
"What passes between these young people, I don't know. A sign, a word, a glance? Who can say? A flower falls from a young lady's hair? Who am I to say that it does not contain a note?
"A young man sees a girl? His friends or acquaintances must know her, or one of their friends or acquaintances. If he keeps out of sight, would it be ill manners to follow her home? It would be most unmannerly if her parents saw him. If he learns where she lives, what other avenues would that open to an introduction?
"There are many ways... and the youth of today, it is resourceful, no?"

Next: Fisherman's paradise.
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