NEWS, VIEWS, AND OPINIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 65, 16 March 1907, Page 9

NEWS, VIEWS, AND OPINIONS.

_,Ir Ernest Favene sends home from Australia a humorous complaint in the __ g r jtjsh Australasian" about the terrible inaccuracies in the "local colour" of many of the colonial stories published by London magazines. In one of these stories, for instance, the hero travels from Wellington, New Zealand, to Perth, West Australia- in a steamer loaded with bananas. The vessel goes through the Australian tropics to reach her destination. The hero is warned by an old prospector -i o t lo sit upon the banana crates en account of the centipedes and scorpions that infest them. It is not suggested that the" old prospector is " pulling his leg! " Then comes the strangest part of the fiction. The steamer arrives at Fremantle, and there takes on board some camels and their Afghan drivers, for conveyance to Perth! Then the steamer continues her vova_e (overland?) to Perth, and there theT"disembark. While waiting for the '•cavalcade" to start for. Kew (Cue), he attends a race meeting, where he again meets with the prospector, who places all the winners (he had just arrived from >-_w Zealand) ; and yet again meets with jiim when the " cavalcade " starts for Kew! On the way the prospector makes coodensers out of galvanised iron (nqthin" else) at a small settlement they pass? The narrator of tbe story then attempts to cut up firewood one morning, and disturbs a singular kind of snake, called, he say?, a " Dukeite,"' which has the disagreeable habit of tracking up the. m an who destroys its mate. Australian naturalists should immediately look up this interesting species. To conclude, hotrever. the prospector also sees the snake, and smacks it with his bare hand (in Australia they usually kill snakes this way;. Unfortunately, the prospector «ets bitten, and dies, and so ends this most interesting and wonderfully faithfully written Australian sketch. "Really," esvs Mr. Favene, " if the editors of the London magazines go on publishing such senseless fiction about Australia as the above they will get themselves disliked put here, and their magazines tabooed."

The world is full of superstition, and one of the worst is that the opal is " unlucky." This superstition arose when the " black death " swept Europe. At that time the opal was very popular, and some noticed that when a victim of the disease was dying the opal on the finger brightened, and when he was dead it became dull. Of course, this took the popular fancy, and at once opals became "' unlucky," and have remained so ever since. Very Jikely they do not change at all on the fingers of a dying person, and the whole matter is like that question which once caused so much discussion in the scientific world—i.e., why is it that when you put a fish in a bowl of water the -.eight of the bowl of water is- not increased? Many learned answers were given, but finally one duffer weighed a bovrl of water with and without the fish in it, and this settled the matter.

That wonderful substance, radium, is still puzzling the scientists. The latest eommdrum is, " Where does it come . from t " Professor July has been trying to answer it. In his opinion radium comes to us from the sun. Put popularly, the professor considers the lately discovered mineral curiosity to bs something in the nature of a solar emanation. He does not believe it to be something inherent in certain earth-born substances, such as the pitch-blende from which Monsieur and Madame Curie first Extracted it. He thinks —for your true man of science is never dogmatic—that it comes to earth continually in infinitesimal quantities with every ray of light, so to speak, that reaches us from the solar orb. That accounts, of course, in a measure, for radium, or, at least, its traces being continually discovered in all sorts of things, gaseous and mineral alike. Of course. Professor Joly's theory will be vigorously combated. All theories are. But it at least adds another element of extreme interest tc the most interesting substance of the age.

Dog bites will not become more generally popular now that the revelation has been made that they will lead to baldness, even if it is not upon the top of the head that you have been bitten. In the case of a young married woman who recovered damages at Ma'.-ylebonc for having been bitten by a dog, it was shown that her hair had taken to falling out in patches in consequence of the shock. This is alarming enough, especially in an age of scepticism, when the world is no longer likely to believe in the efficacy in such cases of incantations such as " keep your hair on." and charms in the nature of the hair of the dog that bit you. But apparently the lady will get her hair back, as she has youth on her side. After forty, die doctor told Sir William Selfe, "it might not be so easy. The moral clearly is that those of us who are more than forty must be particularly careful not to he bitten by dogs, unless we are bald already, and so as happy as the traveller ■with empty pockets in the presence of the highwayman.

There is said to be a revival of Spiritualism throughout Europe. Possibly the n "v generation has forgotten the exposures of the last. In any case the spirits" have recently been much in evidence, particularly in Grenoble. There -ley have managed to bewilder, though D ot to convince, an exceedingly sceptical police force. The house at which they "manifest"' is in the Bu dv Lycee, and J o noisy have the knockings and hammerings become that the neighbours hav c complained to the authorities. Accordingly, the head of the detective department paid the place a visit and asked certain questions. These, so the pretty story runs, were obligingly answered by the "spirits" themselves by of a "knock alphabet." The officer was told that the unseen ones had engagements that would take them elsewhere until Monday. On that date they would be in the Hue Lvcee again. The fleLectivc aecordinglv, on Monday night, grounded the house with police, and Paced others all over the premises inSl .de. But he caught no spirits. He them, and so did his men. lor the "knockers," by means of the code which had been published, told things about the official's priate hfe that were scarcely edifying. 15 furious, and Grenoble is amused. f ac wishes to turn the tables, in the jjgura-ve sense, he should engage the J-nces of a good professional conjuror. - ftt.iT- can alwa y s beat the "spirits" ;at their own game, and would no doubt nag about an ex9osiae and an arret- sirrrf f re needful > ™ the interests of the [gSgwM folk who fall such easy vie- '■*** -ts. spiritualistic fraud.

Englishmen, or, perhaps more aippropriately speaking, Londoners were reminded that the third week in January coincided Avith the centenary anniversary of street lighting by gas. It was a German named Winsor who" set up a row of gas lamps in Pall Mall, and thus introduced an illuniinant which, has since stood the test of time, and has even resisted the competition of its brilliant rival, electricity. Winsor, of course, like a characteristic German, only made a practical application of other people's discoveries. The Scottish engineer Murdoch had already used coal gas as an illuminant in Cornwall; Watt and Boulton had experimented with it in Birmingham; and Lebon had done the same in France. It is, nevertheless, to Winsor that belongs the credit of a first and really practical demonstration of street lighting by gas. Needless to add, that great- men of science, and even men of imagination, ridiculed poor Winsor's efforts. Sir Humphry Davy, declared in ISO9 —that is to say, two years after the display of gas lamps in Pall Mall— l that you might just as well talk about bringing down a slice of the moon to light London as to illuminate it with gas. Sir Walter .Scott, who was a poet, and therefore a "seer," was blind to the extent of classing Winsor as a madman.

Do men love women less than they did, and do women love men less than they did are two curious questions which are being asked with increasing frequency in the United States and in England. It has come about that the men pursue the making of their money, and their various ambitions, more than they ever did before, and that women are not compelled to marry as they were formerly. Love is not so irresistible a factor as it was, and there is a tendency for the members of either sex to retire to opposite camps, and snari at each other. "W T e will marry," say many of the women, "when you can make it worth our while." "We will marry,"' say many of the men, '"when we find a wife who shall improve our prospects!" Meanwhile, the men complain that the women have become mercenary and hard-hearted and unmanageable when married, and the women that the men are more selfish! Circumstances are removing-the centre of happiness from the heart to the pocket* -and both men and women are obtaining now just so mtich happiness as the pocket can provide! This, at least, is the view of "Marmaduke," "Whose notes enliven the pages of the "Graphic."

Has a monkey the legal right to walk along the pavement in its own hilarious manner or any other? That great point looked like being decided at the London South-Western Court recently, when a young Italian organ-grinder, whose monkey had been dancing along the footway of the Streatham High-road behind him at the end of a string, was charged with obstructing that footway. "Do you contend," said the magistrate to the policeman, "that the monkey has not the same right to the footway as you and 1?" The policeman did not pronounce an expert opinion, and even the magistrate seems to have shirked the full question, only deciding that a man may use the footway with a monkey in tow. provided that no substantial obstruction is caused, as in his opinion had not been the case here. It is satisfactory that Ihe fateful pronouncement that a niopjcey has as much right on the footway as a man has not yet been uttered. When it comes, we may next have monkeys applying for chauffeurs' licenses, or storming Parliament with banners inscribed , -'Votes lor Monkeys," and, claiming the I right to go to Hollo way.

On the subject of a middle class, M. Paul Louis, the well-known writer on things Socialistic, has much to say in

"La Classic Moyenne et les Lois Ouvrieres." He is clear that the tendency of all modern —or, what is the same thing, democratic—legislation is to suppress the middle, and especially the lower middle class, of small employers and tradesmen, and to leave the proletariat face to face with gigantic combinations of capital, such as trusts, combines, and stoves. It is, as he points out, the small employer with no reserves of capital behind him who must go to the wall under the pressure of strikes, or even accidents to machinery and the like, and on whom legislation for the protection of labour presses hardly. Although M. Louis deals principally with Continental politics, the same phenomenon appears even more clearly in England, where inspection of workrooms, immunity of trade unions, and now the extension of workmen's compensation, make it ever more difficult for the small employer of labour to live. The amusing part of the story to a cynic is that all this has been brought about by the casting of all power into the hands of the .working classes—a process which has been brought about mainly by the lower middle class themselves under the mistaken idea that they were thus purchasing powerful allies against their richer competitors. Thus might sheep call in wolves to protect them against the dog.

"The Coming American is the subject of a much-discussed paper read to the Association for the Advancement of Science by Prof. MeGee, of the St. Louis Museum, one of the best-known anthropologists in the United States. It is a most interesting problem, this coming American, because there are many people now living who will probably see 250,----000,000 men dwelling in America; or, as Prof. MeGee says,- about one-half _f the total civilised races of the world, all speaking English, and obeying the same Government. Prof. Mcljee believes that the words of Mr. Bryce, the new Ambassador to Washington, as regards America marking "the highest level not only of material well-being, but of intelligence and happiness which the race has yet attained," will apply as much to the future as to the present. "As to the American of to-morrow," he continued, "he is to be more intellectual and more humanitarian than he is to-day. It is often said that the average American of the present age is rushing along in a fierce race for wealth. As a matter of fact.

he is really working through a desire for I achievement." The learned professor thinks that the American of the future will retain the characteristics' of his ancestry, but will be of a composite type, varying greatly in stature, complexion, and configuration of head and body. It will be a vigorous type, for, says the professor, all the strongest types of the globe have been concentrated here, and there will be no tendency to revert to any particular one. The struggle for life, he says, will increase, but- the capacity for the struggle will increase also. "We are going quicker all the time," he went on. "We now walk at the rate of three and three-quarter miles an hour, where our fathers walked at the rate of three and one-half miles." Prof. MeGee had nothing to say directly about another distinguished American, who recently declared that the American hustle was tending to produce a nation of neurotics, dyspeptics, and degenerates; but he did cite Mr. Rockefeller, the Oil King, as the "incarnation of concentrated effort," such '■_s America, alone conld furnish.