NEWS, VIEWS and OPINIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 215, 7 September 1912, Page 13

NEWS, VIEWS and OPINIONS.

Tobacco-smokers may be interested to the results of special study of pipeHnc carried on by a French special- • "th very scientific methods, which Ut !inff published. As the result of much ,re j, he has enumerated his discovthe following eight classes: (1) .Sfjpeisdosely related to the eliaracnf each race. The cigarette and ttr r ,re cosmopolitan. (2) The activity ?/«ation is proportional to the length *. ts=tcm. (3) The shorter Ilia pipe"L the more laborious the n.y.ion. I 1) rUelv, the longer the I ,1 ! , " -tun ? la'zler the nation. (o) The rtriftiness of a nation is in proporK'thP size of it* pipe. (0) The '' '„ wasteful a nation the larger the °° bowl. (") The manner of smoking ™toe betrays the mental character of L P nation. '(S) Tell mc what and how ou smoke, and I will tell you what you ire.

j) lir in<r an excursion in the valley of i,,, Danube, the members of an anthropo«jcal society in congress in Heilbronn, ,/jLanr, were given a stone age banquet v t Edoiiard Hahn, an archaeologist of tfllin A sandbank in the middle of the 1 Vα'served as the table, and all the "tonsils, dishes, etc.. used were of wood, 1 mecially made for the occasion, in exact Station of those used in the stone age. The menu consisted of cabbage soup, ked in a wooden bowl by placing toted stones therein; boiled "leg of J!!,.roast pork with stewed maize, rLjps roasted in the ashes, and a dcs- j rt of dried berries served with honey. i-cording to the guests at this unique tanouet, the human race of the stone age . riod could have had no reason to cornfain of such fare.

The many wonders of malcn manufacture the evolution of the "lucifer" from le fresh-hewn log to the finished article and the rtmarka.ble machinery eracloved in the industry, were explained recently to a party of visitors who were conducted from basement to roof of Messrs Bryant and May's new match factorriE East London. In one department visitors were shown machines which w t the matches from blocks of wood, dip them in paraffin, tip them with conization, and pack them in boxes with pert'precision! Nevertheless, there is ample work for the nimble-fingered ,14 and women in the wrapping up of packages and taking the finished product from these almost human machines. For the workers there are splendid kitchens, dining rooms that offer attractive memi3, consulting rooms for doctor and dentist, trained matrons in case of sudden illjesi, ingeniously modelled cloak rooms, udideil washing arrangements.

farcify of water on the route of the "rat projected trans-Continental railm frbih South Australia to Western ioitiilia mil probably result in a depurture in railway traction. Writes .the "Sydney Daily Telegraph": "It is 'practically certain that oil locomotives will be .-the tractive power on the railway, and'the scheme of construction will k modified to meet the change. It will mean the sfrilg of £200,000 on the cost of water supply—which will be reduced ■ t<;i2sSlfl./.l[r H. Deane (Federal Railrar watching the developmnl of an iaternal combustion engine. ;An &tpn Dieeel electric locomotive has been produced at Sulzer Bros.' works, in Sntoland, and in Great Britain work is proceeding on similar types. Although (team locomotives would, he says, be nsaifor the construction trains at each end of the line during the first stages of the work, be has little doubt that the wiole tractive power will finally be supplied by internal combustion locomotive." It is estimated that the linkingup of Port Augusta with Kalgoorlie will tost and will occupy four or five years. :

About 20 miles up the valley from Peknig are some 30 coal mines, of which one is possibly worthy the name. They we still being operated by the Chinese m tie way of their forefathers, which waits of making a slanting hole in the grcund; into -which a man crawls with a pick and basket. Such a method can not carry shaft to any depth, and 13 utterly unable to cope with water l&Ji the "Continent"). As a conseqooice, moat of the mines have been mm water for the past century, «M the coal is. worthless. One success- «■ ana managed by an Englishman, °¥°y»; about 300 Chinese, who need »tant supervision to see that they do Us work, to watch that they do not injure themselves in the machinery, and to i them from walking off with the «.sTle first lot of steel fittings that [Wived was stolen, and all work had to jeteontiauea.. until a new supply could bm England. How to TOpthenen from stealing all the coal U to. the most diffiCUlt problem. Now 1.,,™* neighbours come by night 'rtflta^«? c works, and but for the ST ;Of two Sikh watchmen and! « *ogs, many a morning would re'Cfc'^ eatly " reduced plant. The 37«^ their sticks over the ; ttel; , lnterested neighbours, and SSTti 0 ** 0, the offenders in the ■"Jug by the nature of their bumps.

J 1 extraordinary case of loss of memat P] y m °uth m the C£^^ c Star liner Majestic l«C i, • rk, One of the passengers %eti I reCoUection of wh ° he is or WtV^ mei3 and so far a) l efforts feu '° ""nulate his memory have »to cJ/A 1,6 On board could be found °»Ca »^ r *.l member seem him come W w hey deckre that he then «»paniai r SSage ticket He was ac " Wd tr, ¥ man ' who afterwards retocAore. . L aer the man was Hf MUM <. apparentJ y dazed condition. «toa(M 1 S 7u "ho Or what he was, "*«dttifc*L c ystery jt was dis - tat out frf T? pockets had been clean CL *et Could be found , but in »onev m On emained a small sum of %«&«.• shown -*n unclaimed dresshit ; n I n a man Splayed some interest P ?v red t0 recc his proNd °Ut noting was found in it which S&ikS 1 / found to be Mr. Charles %>id S ? Chichester. He left ,cs 'With I , WeekS P revious on busiw se snm of mone 5 » his lliet ofi?Lv, remembers feelin g the 118 >»md Ll° rk lntens€l after which N'rrLr T a blank - Wben he himself b 9 re r cons ciousness he found '"•lisßom.ti. ngß house - According , !? s Cto a A ramb,illg statement h « SUve m, c shl P b y a ma n who la , rs (£l > into his hand. **«i£]L 7 m ° ney in his sses -

Curious inferences may be drawn from the statistics of remarriages given in the latesst report of the Registrar-General for England and Wales, which covers 1910. The figures show that the familiar advice to Sam Weller to "beware of widows," has been practised during the thirty-four years 1876-1910 with gradually increasing force both by widowers and bachelors. The remarriage chances of widows do not, now reach 33 per 1000; in the period 1576-S0 they were at 54 per 1000. Widows were in the earlier period more eligible partners to widowers than the men who were taking first spouses; but during 1906-10 the demand for widows as wives by bachelors and widowers had almost equalised.

I A deputation representing newspaper ■proprietors waited on the British Post-tnaster-Ocneral a few weeks ago, asking for a common registration of all newspapers in the Kmpire and uniform postage rate. Mr .Samuel replied that if the newspaper rate of a halfpenny for two ounces were lowered it would be difficult, if not impossible, to refrain from reducing postage for all kinds of ordinary matter. The present rates were unremunerative. Their further proposal that newspapers published in the Dominions should he circulated in Britain at tho inland rate did not involve so heavy a loss. If the halfpenny rate for English newspapers were uuremunerative, would they be justified in extending it to a fresh class of matter? He would, however, give their proposal fresh consideration, for it had come up in a new form.

An amusing incident, in which women compelled the manager of an hotel to provide eligible young bachelors as guests, is reported from Long Beach, a fashionable seaside resort on the Pacific coast, near Los Angeles. The Hotel Virginia, the largest and best patronised hostelry in the place, is thronged with debutantes with their parents and chaperons, and the "Summer Girl" is very much in evidence. It happended that all the men guests were middle-aged, and either married or unmiirriagable. The mothers and chaperons of the girls consulted the manager, and delivered an ultimatum to him to the effect that 150 of his guests would leave tlie house unless he provided young bachelors who could dance and were otherwise eligible. The result is seen in the San Francisco newspapers, in which glaring advertisements offer the very best accommodation in the hotel for £3 a month to desirable young men, "of good family and prospects, who can make themselves agreeable in various social capacities." As the lowest terms per month at the hotel are £20, it is not thought that the manager will have much difficulty in providing the attractions demanded by the ladies.

The history of the human race Is really a history of its meals. And the doctor who has been protesting against afternoen i»a as a meal is right. The man who i 3 eating is not working; and the man who cats breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, ani supper can find very little time betv/€Pn when he is neither digesting nor anticipating-. Whea Xerxes came from Persia through Asia Minor with his huge army, there were thanksgivings because the inva-ders ate but one meal a day. And the workers of the -world, have always tried to get that one meal properly placed in the day. When should dinner come? At midday or eventide? The hour of dining has advanced with the centuries. Froissart mentions waiting on tie Duke of Lancaster at 5 in the afternoon, after-he had supped and .wkj about to go to bed, and the preface to the Heptameron shows that the Queen of Navarre dined at 10 o'clock in the morning. From the Northumberland Household Book, dated 1512, we learn that the ducal family rose at 6, breakfasted at 7, dined at 10, supped at 4, and retired for the night at 0. Louie XlVdid not dine till 12, whilst his contemporaries Cromwell and Charles 11. took the meal at 1. In 1700 the hour was advanced to 2; in 1751 we find the Duchess of Somerset dining r.t 3; and in 1700 Cowper speaks of 4 o'clock as the fashionable time. After the battle of Waterloo the dinner hour was altered to C, from which time it has advanced in England by half-hour stages to 8. So that in 400 years the dinner hour has gradually moved through at least ten hours of the day.

The Post Office Department of the United States is, according to Mr Haskin, by far the largest postal institution in the world. Its 300,000 employees handle more than 15,000,000,000 "pieces of mail" each year, which is one-thml of the aggregate postal business of all the civilised nations. The American Post Office handles more than 800,000 letters every hour of the twenty-four every day in the year; it issues and redeems daily more than 250,000 money orders; it registers daily more than 115,000 letters and parcels, and it ihandles thousands of tons oif second and third and fourth-class matter every hour. For many years there was a big deficit in the operations of the Postal Service, but this has been eliminated, and tihe Post Office is now a paying institution.

There is at present in the infirmary of the Cambridge Workhouse an ex-non-commissioned officer of the Army who holds the Victoria Cross, and is a member of a family of soldiers —three brothers, two sons, and eight nephews either serving or having served in vaTious branches of the Army. The man is ' James Oollis, who was 'barn in Cam■bridge in 1851, and enlisted in the 46th Foot in 1572. He was transferred to the E..H.A. and went out to India, where he arrived just before the war broke out with Afghanistan. Collis went to the front with Major Blackwood and E Battery of B Brigade of the R.H.A., and was present at the disaster at Mai-wand, where the British force was almost annihilated by Ayub Khan. Collis, who was then a gunner, loaded sick and wounded on his gun ami made for the British base. He was nearly cut off on his way, -and to save his charges unlfanbered his gun, under fire of which the wounded were removed on the limber. He was -relieved by a troop of Bombay ■cavalry, under General Nuttal, who complimented him upon his 'bravery. Shortly afterwards Collis again came under notice. A sortie had been made from Kandahar, and the experience of Maiwand was in danger of being repeated. General Primrose came into the bastion where Collis was serving a gun, and asked for a volunteer to take a -message of recall to General Brooks. Collis volunteered, and lowered 'himself down the wall under fire, and succeeded in reaching General Brooks. Twelve months later, at a parade on the Poouah Racecourse, Collis had -his name called out, and had the Victoria Cross pinned on his coat by Lord Roberts (then General Roberts). Collis afterwards joined the Bombay Police, in -which he became an inspector, and experienced various adventures. He returned to England, where his health gave way, and 'he finally decided to make for his native place, whose workhouse infirmary now sUlters him. • ■ "