Are you interested in silk screen printing, court tennis, Canadian gold mining camps and gold mine stock promotion, cryptography, soil conservation, sump pumps?

TIME'S staff is. TIME is a large and varied organization and we maintain a catalogue of subjects that its members know enough about to be counted an authoritative source of information. This catalogue of miscellaneous information is only a minor adjunct to TIME'S research organization, bureaus, correspondents, etc., but it is a useful spot check for TIME'S editors --especially on closing day when time for assembling and verifying information is short. Here, in addition to the subjects mentioned above, are some others that turned up in our recent revision of the catalogue:

A reliable knowledge of tropical fish, the politics and personalities of Burma, Turkish newspapers and journalists, British children's games and books, "most Moslem customs," witchcraft in the U.S., water lilies and other aquatic plants, the Democratic National Convention of 1912 ("I was there"), labor unions in Eastern Pennsylvania, the French horn, the U.S. textile industry and its ramifications, commercial fishing, religious orders of the Episcopal Church, French schools, Russian art, Australian slang, Washington, D.C. bureaucracy ("as distinct from political & diplomatic Washington"), dairy farm terminology, Sauk Centre, Minn., water polo, Austrian dialects, the game of Go, harness racing, etc.

In the process of recording these offerings, some of which are obviously hobbies, TIME'S editorial and business staffs revealed a good deal about themselves. One, an amateur cook, turned out to be the owner of a collection of some 5,000 cook books (in all languages), which he has been assembling since his 18th year. He carries on considerable correspondence with dealers around the world, and has turned a nice profit on some of his choicer finds. His favorite dish: beef a la Stroganoff ("a very fast dish once you have everything to go in it").

Another, who vouched for his knowledge of "American vaudeville of the '203 and the profession of magic," was revealed as a victim of the decline of that vaudeville.

Forced to turn to something else to make a living, he chose journalism. A writer, apparently influenced by the "300 turtles" he kept in his back yard as a small boy, is now a specialist in herpetology. An editor, who says he "never went to school much," lists, among others, the following subjects he feels qualified to give an opinion on: dairying, entomology, the Society of Friends, gypsies, swine husbandry, Latin poetry.

The influence of World War II on TIME'S staff was plainly seen as one correspondent after another listed his wartime specialty (tanks, machine guns, field artillery, radar, naval aircraft, naval landing craft, aerial navigation, radio, military laws, etc.) and the places he could be counted on for a "local knowledge" of: Berlin (occupied), Normandy ("especially the beachhead"), Bizerte, Hollandia, Mindoro, Samar-Leyte Bay, Cassino,

Belsen Concentration Camp ("not a prisoner"), Rome (wartime), Shanghai and the North China coast, Kunming, Calcutta, Tokyo (wartime), "parts of the Marshalls, Gilberts and Marianas," Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Tarawa.

It is an impressive list and, in time, TIME'S editors will probably tap all of it in their weekly process of verifying the news TIME prints.

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