TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 10864, 14 January 1901, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The servant girl in England The appears to have become as perServant plexing a problem as her sister Girl. in the colonies. Though absolutely essential for the peace nnd happiness of every well-ordered household, domestic servants are every day becoming scarcer, until we find a state of things existing which threatens to revolutionise tlie social code. Not long since, a young woman who advertised for a situation as a housemaid, received next morning eighty letters and tliree telegrams, and had, in addition, three ladies waiting upon lier to secure her services. As a matter of fact, in England, the servants now hold ths key to tli3 position. Mistresses are bound to take what they can get, and are beginning to enoniro despairingly what is to be the end of it* Many fear the advent of tho state of things existing in America. There hotel life has become vastly popular, owing to its perfect freedom from all worry and anxiety about servants. Similarly, in London, and some other parts of the kingdom, many of the smaller housekeepers are taking to "fiat" life, described as something intermediate between the entirely separate household and the great public hotel. In some of the flats there is a measure of common -service, while, in many cases, entire service is included in the rental. Tenants get from two to half-a-dczen unfurnished rooms at rents ranging from £90 to £300 a year, and all service is done for them. They must, of course, take their meals in tha common dining-room, or pay extra fee... for service in their own apartments, and in tliis and other ways, life in flats becomes in tho main pretty much the same as. life in hotels. As for the causes for the scarcity of domestic servants, they seem to be practically the same both at Home and in the colonies. Girls long for a .Jrcer life, and for work whichshail have some limitations of hours. One London paper, summarising the opinions gleaned upon the subject, says that servants, almost alone amongst workers, are always at somebody's beck and call; they must always be on the alert, and from -early morning till late at night, from week's end to week's end, they never have a moment to call their own. They distinctly object to this, when they see that girls in other situations have their evenings and Sundays, to themselves, and enjoy in addition numerous holidays. A plea is made for more considerate treatment of servants, and it is urged that they should be relieved of some of the heavier duties sometimes expected of them. Wliat is known as "day service" is a recognised institution which has grown out of the exiting condition of things. Registryoffice keepers in middle-class neighbourhoods affirm that they have no difficulty in finding girls who will go out for a definite number of hours daily, and many thousands of mistresses have been driven to the necessity of submitting to this "day service." Whether this will prove a satisfactory soiution of the problem remains to be seen. A man great in the poultry A world is Mr. William Cook, Great author of "The Poultry Poultry Breeder and Feeder," and disFarmer. tinguished as the man who haa made the name of the Orpington famous. • Mr. Cook, who arrived in South Africa the other day on business connected with his particular industry, is one of the most extensive rearers of poultry in tha world. At his farm at Orpington House, in Kent, he 'breeds 25,000 fowls a year, to say nothing of geese and ducks. He claims credit fcr having introduced ten new varieties of fowls and three of ducks. Fifteen years ago he brought out tbe.black Orpington. Th.n in 1386 -there appeared the black rcseconib Orpington, and three years later the white Orpington. The famous buff Orpington dates from 1894, and the Jubilee Orpington from 1897, while the spangled Orpington appeared in October of 1599. The three special varieties of ducks which h* introduced were the white Indian runners, dating from 1693, the blue Orpingtons, from 1896, and the bull Orpingtons, from 18S_. The blue and buff Orpington** caused a great stir in the poultry world, aa a but! duck had; never been heard of before these were produced, and blue ducks .had been almost unknown. There were only seven known varieties of deme-tic ducks before the: three bred by Mr. Cook were produced. Mr. Cook pursues systematic lines in breeding, and is able by his system to obtain eggs in the autumn end winter, whilst the yield for the year is much larger — as many as from 190 to 260 eggs, as against 80 or 100 eggs _ro<a **°" ordinary

farm fowl. Mr. Cook wa3 the first man to show that it is possible to make fowlrearing on a large scale pay. Not only this, but he has proved that it is possible for fowls reared ia -small runs to lay more eggs in a year than if they were in a large field. His advice is greatly sought after by poultry and other societies, and he travels throughout the length and breadth of England for this purpose, lecturing and inspecting poultry. Not long since lis visited Australia, where he acted as ju_ge at various *>'hows. He has gone to South Africa to study on ths spot the diseases which afflict fowls in that country more than in any other part of the world. As the result of this visit, he will, no doubt, make another valuable contribution to poultry lore, when he publishes tha information obtained during his stay in the country.

Scientific marvel.! are coming Tha so thickly one upon the oth.r Latest that it is already a difficult Marvel, matter to keep count of them.

The telegraphone is the latest. This is a device invented by a clever telegraph engineer of Copenhagen, Herr Pouls.'ii, with the object of recording telephone messages as they arrive in one's office. It simply fulfils the idea which Mr Edison had in his mind when, having invented the phonograph, he thought it would prove usetul as a recorder of spoken messag.s received through the telephone during one's absence. A man leaving his office for a f-.w minutes would merely have to connect his telephone with the recorder, upon which any messages which came while he was out would be registered. Tlie earlier phonographs, however, were too insensitive for this purpose, and attempts since lnado to adapt the invention to this use have not been successful. Now Herr Poulsen has come upon the scene. "His discovery has so so far proved itself that it is now actually iii operation in some of tlie Danish telephone stations. His invention is based upon the use of magnetism. An electro-magnet, which is practically a telephone without th-e vibrating plat., now in use in the receiver, is employed, with a magnetised steel wire passing between its two poles. The magnetic record in the wire is so durable that the inventor says it will give over a thousand repetitions of the message. It will also bear transport from place to place by rail or post, so that messages can be sent with it to a distant place, and thero reproduced, as is the case with the waxen record of the -(.heliograph. Moreover, the magnetic record can ba "rubbed out," so to speak, and the same wire used over again for other messages. The invention is not only useful in itself, but it opens up the principle of recording by magnetism, and this will no doubt- De extended in other directions.