NEWS, VIEWS and OPINIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 167, 13 July 1912, Page 13

NEWS, VIEWS and OPINIONS.

ii _ D - l: the "Grand Rapids Furni- ; ;e .wry t mc ,h.u s -jca :ear. i . . _ at i .-" *"" '--■ '"' . J 'i, = :-"■' .'.' •■'."'. . . \ r.jstir :;_.- :- ■• a .-Jt •.'. i.-i..-..^--l -jshi' ll '- - ,:; - • '-*' - ' • l -"° " '.'. ■' ,0 ' ,_-. .- - ■-. - '._. crow. Lie mtilr. '_ re i.- ."•"...*: " _a-:s tii- . -.- .-■ ' " . .;..-->: .. :.a-:s, ha- .. „-.-: ' •J-: "■ -' ''"• '_ - 1 ~*. * ,''. ,-i,-' ■",*. ,\ , ;r s:s.en: '■' ■'.> "_• - l _ '.'"=.. r . .'"' ul'.. ?' _ '~ V-,s "tlel""''.'._z" S ''■- >" i '•" ' **" n '" '"'-/. ' . * c "■-?"'_=•"' , - waders q..a 'X .--' .-ey " -*•'-- •:.- a i Edit." - dive* and pi.e.-.j - c.»o. ij again, .- ?ck->:'_ spreads lit.. -■: ff ,d Si'iawks: pr- "V;*?- sr.d roo.nI ..- r:> i •" "" s-'T-.n:- .-.r. • ■ enough t '■ ". v. •- ;n.i:i, :'?• _rea.es; p.. t--.-rpi.--ce ,"-V' -.-v.; r .^::' s:o? -~i:l-.>::'",.l Ar'lcrs-on. stationed a: -~.-., '.. - re en:.-.- taken pams to "L- •-. .*_•.:- , n 'that the grow.ng andencv on the part of ( hinamen to _-.'"•(• '"ith "-'"""'" ■'■>>'' -'-.'I sn'? w <-' '"'■ .-.:' m.l ,' - '.'"'./ . cheap . 0 P ere . - . , this i■'•-.. = -;. U aiticars u ?t the c V J( .s S '.vr-n U '-'Jt ■-■ ->"- : - never sold, .v: ■it-hvavs pr-ser-.-l . -r .......1 «i.n ...;» ,__._ Mr A ', ?l^1 ". J",, ih-_ L . j a rule : hroajanat sotit.l ' n:n.i| v.fil a- - n •'■ ottier parts r.f the I Gantry ft'-m «hl-_t he has been able' i C secure information on the subject. ; i. in advisory council has been formed j, London :'.-.r the purpose oi making preliminary arr.ingerem* fur an aviation race 'from _.- ndon to India -.n >epnanber. li i- expected that at lea-: -.tree British aviator* will :aKe part in mc attempt. The route i- fairly clear =; far a- Vienna, and after that the .visl.T- "ill foil -v the course of the awuhp as far as Nlkonoli. .md go over the ship!;.'. Pass "... Adrianoplc. Erom Constantinople the Anatolia railway will x followed t "' r.-anti. snj the route aftenvaris lies by way of Tarsus. Adana. Aleppo. Ba.hii. the Euphrates. an l Tips to B-Sbirc. alon_ the c.-; of th» rersiiin Gull" to Bur-da Abbas. and thence along the Arabian sea to Kararhi. whi'li i- the firs.t point that can i ■ if touched in In.ha. The distance.] roughly speaking, Is about 4.500 miles. i Immediate Allowing the appearance of Mr Roe-.;' lie.- in tne witness-bos,' lawyers engaged iv computing the present wealth ■"- the richest man ■ m '.he world, "'"nose bland innocence md engaging .:■■-;:? to give till inform..tion it: 1. - ;•■ «er have exasperated the Govemn-.ent in f-tigat..;- t-f the Oil Iras-, writes a N"< ■'■ York correspondent. Mr >eke. lier baffled '.lie most searc'uirt: questions aimed at e.iK-aa.ing how the parent company l the Standard Oil Tru-t maintained its control over the daughter is-unpanie* since the Trust was officially .1.-solved. The esti- . mates no« mule .n the supreme Court's ; judgment have added at least £20.000_-0 to the wealth of Mr Rot-ke- | feller. whose fortune i- believed to: amount to ClsO.'.iO- .-00 s.erling. Mr Eoiticet'eiJer has himself <-o:itess.d that be is anab'ie to estimate within two m.i- i 'ions the value of his possessions. His , i___e from the Standard Oil Trust iinoun'- ii ._?.000,000, and from other | ..tiroes he _<—-_yes annual revenues" trhieb tlu.tuitr between three and five millions. The an___t of his donations for philanthropic purpo-.es exceeds _34.f100.0n0. Mr W". -.imp.-on. in ''Meeting the can." "ij"s same amazing examples of Chinese signs. "I saw in Peking a list of signboard-, ar.i a few samples of them will illustrate their _eneral character." he write-. " "Shop of Heavenrent Luc!;.' 'The Shop of t-o'.-.ial Principles.' The Nine Felicities Prolonged.' 'Mutton Shop of Morning Twilight.' 'The Ira Virtues All C'omplet..' '.lowers Rise to the Milky Way.' lit these sitrns ttt can see that the Chinese can combine the soul of a poet with the p. --ket ota shopman. Contrast such efforts with 'The Noted lr>i-pie House' of the London streets, and one must feel that ie are outer harharians. Carlyle quotes a Chinese signboard. 'No Cheating Here." but I could not find anything lie it in the list, -flood and just according to Heaven' ought to satisfy the . ideal notions of the author of 'sartor EesartUs." " "The Honest Pen Shop of Li" implies that other pen shops are sot honest. The Steel shop of the Pock-marked Wang" suggested that any peculiarity of -a shopman may be used to iniprer? ihe memory of customers. , &_rb noses, squint eves, lame lees, or lamp harks might all be used in this | »ay. A charcoal-shop calls itself the "Fountain of Beauty." and a place for fte sale of cr-al indulges in tne title . of *• Heavenly "Embroklerv." An oil and : trine establishment i- the '"'Neighbourlot, of Chief Be-uty." a description the realisation of wh-ich ir i- hard to con- ; reive anywhere in Peking. "The Thrice _i_hteo_s " one would scarcely expect from an opium-shop. ' A curious wager concerning the Tr-cn.- 1 fflly of twenty years a_o. and the difTi- | rclties which had arisen from it. were described the other day to the Lord Chief Jtstire and other judges in the King Bench Division, of the London Court.' Re Court was asked to decide whether: > county-court judge could be ordered fo hear an action for the return of a tiger deposited with a stakeholder. Mr Toyser. appearing for the Great . ar- j mouth county-court iud_e. said a rale : tad been obtained calling upon his client to show- cause why he should not hear •"-action Ive. v. Shrceve. The action j **- the result of a be: of £■") that one i ci the partes could not have bought. tfsnty year- ago. meat by retail from a tiop -n Pjecadilly at five o'clock in the doming. The question for the judge *U whether he could hear an action fought by the successful wagerer against . 8- stakeholder. Mr .Shreeve, who refused '° five up the stake because he had been Wi not to by the man who had lost. S* in dee. however, struck the case out, hiding that it was a betting transaction, Sid he would have nothing to do with it. % Lord Chief Justice said be r.gieed 'dth the jtid-e when he said the matter *S ridiculous ronsens". Counsel: That T be. but the-e people have only the towity-ooun to go to for their legal %_ts". The Lord Chief Justice said the *"•_ thought the county-court judge •fould be asked to hear and determine action. At the present time be had *>' done that, but had decided that it **•« betting transact!!* before he heard file facts. " !

The appointment of the commission which has just altered the site for the new capital 0 India, was a sore blow to certain Civil servants in India. who had already spent weeks in planing the Imperial city. Whole sheets o; plans had been prepared, and all the fin? Government buildings which are to be erected allotted, with nearly fifty bungalows for the higher officials' of the Delhi ' Government, and all this work was not. when a commission was set up. worth showing. ].«: i- he regarded as mer'.y en invitation to captious critt-er-m on the part of the "men from London." if the present -a ere less engrossing : -'an .: is. the -- ... fa-;- lulling thing in '■■•*• world wmil-d be to --it and watch '■ -i" --"p in tinner.-a! history being filled .:p by an accumulation of fact as slotv and sure as t_i e growth of a coral island. Professor G-rst-ng has just, reported progress in bis excavations -urt.ng the ruins of the Hittites. that -ir.tn.e rare which pursued a civilisation ■'.' its own for over three thousand year.-. He has found a mound which proves to he nobbing but a cairn of stratified cities, showing how each genration built afresh upon the graves of those before it- It; one corner is the r.!n--c of he King-Priest, the Hittite '•'•t'.-torp-.n of Melchisedek: in another : ~ the fuse heap for broken pottery, which was doubtles. the abode of the ; -en! Job or Diogenes. One wonders if their spirits thrill as ours do at this contact across fifty centuries'. The recent ruling of a divisional court in England that the cat is a harmless animal would not have satisSed the earlie_t of our writers on natural history. Edward Topseil. In his *__i_t_rie of Fo:ir-foo:.d Beasts." Top. e_ dwells on— "the harmes and perils that come unto men by the cat. This is a dangerous beast, and as for necessity we are constrained to nourish them for the suppressing of -mail vernxine, so with a '.vary and discreet eye we must avoid their harms, -making more account of their use than .>:' their person.. . . . They are dangerous in time of pestilen c. fur they are no » on apt to bring heme v-n- — .-.us infection, but :a pois-.m a man with very ]. ■-_*.__ upon ; m. Wherefore there is in some men a natural abhorring of Cats, their natures. '-"■ - so '.-imposed that when they see them . . . they fall into passions, sweatings, frettincs. pulling off their h__s, and trembling fearfully.-' Dr. Inge, the Dean of St. Paul's, in his sermon at a "Sons of the Clergy" festival, in London, quoted a remark made to him by the late Sir Francis Galton that "from the point of view of er.-cnii'.-. the most valuable class in the whole community was the clergy of the -birch of England." This point had been laboured two centuries a_o by another Dean —him of St. Patrick's. Dean Swift, in hi- masterpie.-e of murderous irony. "An Argument Against Abolishing t'hri-tianity." pleads lor the retention of "nominal" Christianity. because the clergy are so useful to the "-.ate for breeding purposes. '"Here." he says, "'are ten thousand parsons reduced by the wise regulations of Henry the Eighth to the necessity of a low diet and moderate exercise, who are the only great restorers of our breed, without which the nation would become but- one vast hospital.'* According to Mr. Havelock Ellis. . _- Francis fialton and the two Deans are corroborated by the "Dictionary of National Biography."' -An African tribe with some most extraordinary customs has been discovered by Dr C. <'. Seligmann. of the Wcl-lcomo Tropical Ke-earch liiboratoncs. one of ; the branches of the Gordon Memorial ■ College at KihaTtoum. This tribe is the .hilluk. whh-h lives in a narrow .trip of land along the hanks of the Xile on 1 the northern edge of the B-hr-El-O'hazel i province. There are about 40.000 of i them living in small villages of huts surrounded by fences of dura stalks. The most striking feature is the veneration paid to the king, and the marked line of demarcation between the arist. racy and the commoners. The former is constituted entirely- of the royal familychildren, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of the king. 'Royal descent, however, is no: recognised beyond the fourth generation. The difference between the aristocracy and the commoners is exemplified in a most striking manner. All the -commoner, of both sexes have their lower central incisors knocked out. and even the grandchildren may conform to this practice if t„«_.please. Thong- the people honour the king in his prime, when he attains senescence they .promptly prepare for his successor. The sovereign, •* killed with due ceremony at the first sign* of illhealth or old age. Any son has the rich, to attempt to dispatch his father, and if iicces-fii-l to reim in his stead. The deed is carried out at night, because the king is alone in his err..o«iire •_.*•_ his wive.. and wit-iout the bodyguard which attends his movement- during the day. An interesting __ve:opmenr in the jewelry trade has arisen, says tne •'Time_." throuzh the _iK-ce.s- which has been attained within the las. few years in the artificial production of certain "em stones. The imitation of precious stones by suitably coloured glass or by the substitution of stones of less value is by- no means a new an: but such counterfeit stones can always be more or less easily detected on a careful ex-amin-a-rion. Attempts have frequently been ma-dc to manufa.ture real gem .tones a-tife-aily. and in many <"_se.s with -uccess. Ruby and even diamond, have thus been obtained in the laboratory: but the stone, produced were alvvavs very small and quite unsuitable for" cutting, until it was discovered ■ob-tt fragment." of ruby could be fused together in the oxyhydro.en blowpipe to form a homogeneous mass having ident:cal properties with the natural stone. More la.te-ly a modi.-iat.ion of '.his process has been introdu-ed. by which a pure-". artificial substanceammonia alum—on being fed into the blowpipe flame is at once decomposed and fuseinto a pear-shaped drop or "boule" of cryst-i-ised alumina. n-bh-h -an readily be <TOwn to a diameter of half an inch or more. This product, if suitably coloured _- the ad-di-ion of a trace of chrome alum, is in fact true ruby, and for practical purposes is in no way inferior to a natural stone of the same colour, from which it is indistinguishable but *"or the occasional presence of minute hubbies, which are almost unavo : daHe. _ blue ra-rietT has also been obtained. which _10--] v resembles the natural sa-pphire CrVsitallised a._n_in_ has also been prepared colourless and of yellow and -rreen tints, and the products have been r sold under the fancy names oi ••s-.j-ntifie brilliant" "'scientific alexandrite *' etc With -he exception, however "of spinel, no _em stone, other than ruby and sap. hire have yet bera prepared artafi-C-aßy on a eo__mer(_a_ scale.