NEWS, VIEWS and OPINIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 60, 9 March 1912, Page 13

NEWS, VIEWS and OPINIONS.

The recurrence of Leap Year reminds (is that mankind hid lived a good many years before it learned hj >\\ to count them properly: but we now know that. a vear contain?. :iii-"> da.*-, •"> hours, '.:-( minutes, 40 second-. By .me of thjarliest known ways ni reckoning, a year lasted during the waxin.' and waning of twelve moons. Bin llii- "f course wm shorter than a -olar voir, with the rejult that tho seasons and the months did not march in step. .1, it were, and ihe months of ripened fruit would become after a decade or so the time of bare trees and frost. To remedy this, ill extra month was "thrown in' from time to time, and this was the method adopted by the Roman pontiffs, who found the" power thus (riven them 01 plavin" fast and loose with the calendar extremely useful for extending or curtailing a dignitary'* period of office or the life of a lease. Hut the reforming teal of Julius C'aeear. with an astronomer's aid. inaugurated a more orderly reckoning. In order to give the Julian Calendar" a fair start, the year 4ti B.C. ("the vear of ei.rnfu.-i on" 1 hud 445 days, and thenceforth each year was *o have 365 days, with an extra day in every fourth "year, this year being known as •Leap Year." A mi-take was made, however, in the working of this calendar. Tjeap Year counted every three years instead of every four. Augustus Caesar adjusted the inaccuracy in th" year 8 8.C., by ordering that no leap ?ears be counted for twelve yeare. la this condition the calendar remained for more than fifteen hundred years, when it was discovered that the solar year in reality contained eleven minutes and a few s'eeonds less than 365J, days. The remedy f° r this was applied by Pope Sresory the thirteenth, who annulled ten "days, by counting the sth October as the 15th. and ordained that three of the appointed leap years in evry four hundred should he counted as niich, the last Tear of each century being counted as inordinary year, except when it is divisible by fouVhundred. The year 1900, it will be remembered, was not a leap year and neither w»re 1800 nor 1700. but the year 2000 will be so. Old Kngland was one of the last countries to adopt the Gregorian reckoning, and it was only in &e fate of much opposition from the tintiucated. who had a vague notion that thev were somehow being robbed, that a bill was passed in 1751 annulling eleven days in September of the following year. The old Julian Calendar is still followed by Kuesia, so English and Russian dates do not tally. The Russian New Year tommences thirteen days later'than ours. notwithstanding statements to tha eontrary, there will be no minority report of"the Divorce Commission, says an English weekly. The Commissioners have arrived at a practically unanimous derision in favour of cheaper divorce. Considering the well-known opinions of some of them, including the Archbishop of York and Sir Lewis Dibdin, this will tome as a surprise to most people; but Lord Gorell's powers of talking people over to his point of view ha-'e been employed to some purpose. There will be one or two supnlementary memoranda, bnt no disagreement on any point of eonsequence when the report appears eu!y in the New Year. When the Japanese came into control of Formosa they found the: opium habit ■wiM-j prevalent, especially with that of the population that were of Chinese The Japanese discovered that diper cent, of the male population were addicted to the opium habit. The greatest percentage of these were among the educated classes. In an endeavour to elucidate the point as to the instigation of the habit, the first step was traced in 93 per cent, of the cases to the me of the drug by medical advice. Public opinoin was at first hostile to the attempts of the Japanese in eradicating the evil; but now, owing to the judicious measures adopted, a strong public sentiment has arisen against the opium habit. In point of magnitude the railroad rjrtem of the United States is the greatest, consisting of miles, with Stasia, Germany, France, and Great Britain following in the order named, bnt in the number of passengers carried per year Great Britain heads the list, fol lowed by Germany, United States. France, and Russia." Great Britain has the greatest number of passenger cars, *ith Germany following, United States thbi, France fourth, and Russia last. It must be rememebered that the wirrying capacity of the coaches of the United States is greater. The lines of the United States haul twice as much freight it England, with Germany, Russia, and France following. The United States *!so excels in the number of freight care. 1 The modern reporter finds it difficult to secure what are known in Press cir«es as "scoops" or exclusive information. Therefore enterprising journalists invent fcm. The other day. says a Paris corespondent, M. Andre Glarner, of the "Excelsior," fell into the Seine on purPose from a bateau-mouche, so as to re Wrd has experiences in his paper, and to * able to tell a more or less interested PttMic that Seine water tasted nasty, tost it took eight minutes to save a drowning ma;i, and that nobody was •*ry interested in his being saved at all M- Glarnes dressed himself in carpet •uppers and the cap and blouse of a torking man, got on to a bateau*ouche, fell off it near the Pont de ['Alma, and shouted for help. Nobody Pmped in after him. After eight min- «■» "Oh Mon Dieu-ing" and "Oh 'la la*g," somebody on board his boat threw Jjjß a rope and somebody from another "»t threw a buoy. He came out of «« Seine with no worse loss than that lUhis cap, a little breath, and one of his ! «pet slippers. Head hunting, the greatest passion of 'he Dyak, has its roots in his courtship, *=d in his idea of immortality and filial Section. A Dvak legend tells that "the lighter of the'ir great ancestor, who replies in heaven near the evening star, ftfused to marry until her betrothed bought her a "gift worthy her acceptance. The man went into the jungle *nd lolled a deer, which he presented tn » er . but the fair lady turned away in oisdain. He went away and returned *ith a mias (orangoutang), the great monkey who haunts the forest, but this present was not more to her taste. Then ' u » fit of despair the lover went abroad •ad killed the first man he met, and, -Mowing the victim's head at her feet, piffled at the crueltv she had made of) but> t0 bis ?lir p r ise. ?h----™»0, and said that now 1,.? had (lis- , only gift worthv of herself." «atothigday a Dyak girl will often re*wl many a man who has not -takpn *■* one head. Still more binding «ii /*l? yak is the obligation to furita a T* head to attend the spirit of •V. MM member of his family.

Seventeen thousand school children aTe daily fed in Vienna by charitable institutions, but thousands more have to go without a midday meal owing to lack of funds. A society has just been formed, however, to ensure that in future all hungry children may be fed. It is hoped to raise the money by an ingenious idea. All bills in hotels, restaurants, and music I halls are in future to be made out by the waiters on special forms issued by the society. These forms are to cos* one farthing each, which will be paid by the guests, and the proceeds entirely devoted to feeding the school children. A great number of inn and hotel keepers have already agreed to assist in this novel method of charity. It is suggested that there Is some con nection between the si*e of feet and sanity To many this is. no doubt, a painful subject, but to all it would seem to have some interest from the fact that J- is possible, according to a report presented to the Paris Academv of Sciences to gauge the mental capaeitv from the eize of the feet. It sounds strange, but we are told that "sanity can be measured by the feet, both in men and women " ( unously enough, the rules for the two sexes are "t)he reverse, of one another" I Ihus, some men have large fet. and some women small feet. In statistics given, it ■is shown that of one hundred mad J women, only eighteen had small feet. Of , one hundred mad men, sexenty-six had 'email feet. Xo actual measurements are given, so one seeks in vain to know what I trie statistics regard as relatively lar"e. and small feet. The report proceeds to say that out of one hundred normal men eighteen have small feet, while out ot one hundred sane women twenty-three have larg feet In the days cf '49, San Francisco was known as Yerba Buena, and manv a ship was left stranded there—stranded in a double sense, for the crews would desert en masse for the gold diggings, and besides the exodus of the sailor men,' the captains in many cases did so likewise, recognising the hopelessness of getting a crew. As the land encroached it was filled in to seaward, the ships gradually became hotels on dry land. Among these ships was the Niantic. After being deserted the ship was pulled ashore, and converted into a lodginghouse. The shallow water at her stern was gradually filled up with sand brought from the neighbouring streets, and the Niantic became a fixture on the land. After many years the Niantic Block, one of the best" constructed build ings of the early days, was erected over her timbers. The Niantic Block perished in the conflagration of 1906, and later on, when digging the foundations for a new Niantic building, the keels and ribs of the old ship were found fast in tne mud and sand, the timber being as sound as the day she was launched 6*2 years before. English judges seem to have suddenly arrived at the conclusion that humour ie a necessary feature of modem judicial administration. I was told a very good story the other day concerning a pompous gentleman who had been robbed in one of our courts of law (relates a writer in an English weekly). "Yes, sir, robbed!" And he cried out it was disgraceful that one couldn't remain in an English court of justice for half an hour without being robbed, under the very eyes of the lav.-. At length the attention of the judge was directed to the raging gentleman. "What is it that is disturbing you?' he asked. "It's an outrage, sir!" fumed the oiher. ''My overcoat has been stolen since I entered this court." "Oh, tut-tut! That's a mere trifle," said the judgr, with a pleasant smile. "Why. whole suits are lost here every day:" The pompous one was almost immediately afterwards arrested for using profane language in public. President Aley of the University of Maine is the latest to lay a wreath of laurel on the modest brow of agriculture. "All of us can remember," he told Portland Farmers' Club, "not very far back, when the farmer was the butt of all the jokes and furnished the material for the vaudeville stage. He was the hayseed and the jay. To-day we are approaching the time when we are beginning to look on the fundamental industry of farming as being fundamental, and being so important that it looms up large among the other callings of the world." This is putting it rather coldly, thinks the "Chicago Tribune?" which continues, "■we are not only 'approaching the time,' we are in the very midst of it. when agriculture is bespoken with extremest deference. ■Reuben with the "high water pants," the carpetbag, and the hirsute dado survives only on the vaudeville stage, where types are preserved in a state of fossilized permanency. Meanwhile, the real farmer has became an agriculturist, breaks the speed laws in a 1912 car knows the batting averages in both leagues, and the latest air from Puccini, and condescends insufferably from his felicitous estate upon mere denizens of cities. The president of the University of Maine does not seem to realise that agriworship is not "approaching." It is here. And a good thing it is. Within the next few months, says the "Pall Mall Gazette," a v great effort will he made to stir the nation to a sense of the peril that threatens it in tin. spread of the drug habit. During recent yeare the gravest warnings have bee? unheeded, and the use of drugs among all classes of the population has enormously increased. The drug-tsker in. thi° Country is not essentially a sensualist. In not one case in a hundred can it be asserted that the initial step! was taken in order that a depraved | appetite might be gratified. On the, other hand, the strain and stress of' modern life, the mental and physical exhaustion which that life involves, and, actual bodily pain are almost invariably the cause of the resort to drugs. Men and women have sought their aid in the full determination that the need of the moment met. there the end s' ould be. Apart altogether from the usual reason; for the first step in drug taking, there is another and more significant cause for the alarming spread of the habit. "Drug taking has be.'ome fashionable." The re-mark was made by a well-known doc tor. and its accuracy is borne out by the fact that a new hypnotic is intro iluced and becomes fashionable much in the same way as a new style of dressing the hair. In West End drawing-rooms there are whimpered recommendations and chemists have to meet the demand. The hypodermic syringe is also sold to nn extent that indicates a widespread use, and manv dainty handbags contain all lint is required for a stimulating injection. Disclosures made some! time ago to the effect that in Paris a certain lady always encouraged her guests at afternoon tea to* baie their arms while she administered a morphia injection to each one in turn could be paralleled here. "<