TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 11131, 25 November 1901, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The Dowager Lady Carew, of A Story Wexford, whose death at the

of age of 104 years was reported "Waterloo, the other day, actually lived

in three centuries. She was born in 1798/ about the time when

■won the batt—».of the Nile; she' saw tbe nineteenth century ushered in, and the davrn of the twentieth found her still alive, and in good health. The Dowager was chiefly interesting as being one of the last survivors of the famous ball held at Brussels before the battle of Waterloo. Lady CSarew (then Miss Cliffe) was 17 years of age at the time, and she often related the stirring I incidents <#' a"" gathering which, to quote y Gha_.ee D- Yonge, has been "more widely celebrated than any entertainment ever given since Belahaszar poured lib-bions to his gods in the sacred'vessels of the altar of Jerusalem, or Thais lighted Alexander on his way to overwhelm the towers ot Babylon in the flames of the second and more fatal conflagration." The "sound of revelry by Bight" was heard, not on the eve of Waterloo, as Byron would have us beheve, but two nights before. When Wellington and his o-tcers withdrew from the ball, it was to fight the French at Quafcre Bras, aad not at Waterloo. "The hurry of departure whioh followed upon the fete exposed the Duke for many years," says a chronicler, "to the imputation of having been surprised by the French —an imputation which even Englishmen are dis- . inolined to renounce, lest the force which i some of the grandest lines ever penned by Lord Byron, derived from their supposed truth, should be destroyed. The' muse of history, dispelling tho injurious fiotdon in which the sister muse delights, has at length (this was written nearly 40 years after) vindicated the reputation of the Duke. It is now admitted that from first to last he was fully prepared, and leisurely gave his orders." A postponement of the ball, it seems, had been suggested, but the Duke of Wellington asked that no change in the _rr*ngeme>nt~ should be made. Many of his officers, however, were instructed by the Duke merely to show themselves at the \ ball, ahd then depart quietly to join their regiments, which Jong before daylight were in full march towar«— the, scene of action. Wellington remained at the dance till after midnight, but three or four hours later he too was spurring fast to Qu-tre Bras to meet hia famous foe. The ball was kept going till 1 a.m. by "some energetic and heartless young ladies," wrote Lady Georgian- Lennox, who was present, but to most of th*. ladies "it was a dreadful evening, taking leave of friends and acquaintances, many never to be seen again."

Among the scientific illEarthquakes struments whioh the Naand their taonal Antarctic ExpediSignatures. tion will take on" its voyage

of -discovery is a Milne se-snergraph. This sensitive recorder is in ata way the most interesting of all the instruments, for as Mr , Louis Bernacchi has pointed out, it will be for many a. month absolutely the only link which will connect the __pedtti—a with the civilised world. The nams of John Milne, F.R.S., is inseparably associated with the science of seismology. His observatory at Skide, in the Mc of Wight, is the headquarter- of the earthquakes of the world- Every con- | siderable earthquake, whether in Japan, ; Alaska, or at the bottom of the deepest sea—where, indeed, moat quakes originate —sends a record of its action to the Milne observatory. A writer in "The.ldler" gives an interesting description of the _ist-n—-ante by means of which.the earthquakes send their "signature-" to Professor Milne from all parts of the world. The pen-points thab do the writing are finhairs of glass on the cuds of pendulums which swing horizontally. So delicately poised are the pendulums that the pressure of the dew on the ground outside of the obsetvatory, and even the light and .shade, affect them. The instruments rest on blocks of stone, which go down into the earth without touching the buildings in which they are housed. ' AU the earthquake signatures come direct through the earth, and afterwards ••repeats"' come rippling over the. earth's surface - from both east and west, : Whenever there is a quake the sensitive pendulum swings,. and sets a ray of light waving back' and forward On a roll of se_aiti-ed paperY which runs over a pulley turned by clockwork. The result is a photographic record, the character of which depends ou the intensity of the earthquake and the distance. It has trav_B-d. - The Professor's. observations have shown- the earth to be a strangely restless body, constantly .shivering all over, and once in seven days "heaving up. its crtist over thousands of square miles of srfrface at a time in stupendous sighs." Ninety per cent, of the shocks recorded in 1899 were shown to have originated at" great depths beneath the sea, and it is estimated that had. Professor Milne's records been available when, the cable companies were laying their lines, they could have saved £800,000 'by -voiding the dangerous places he has marked on his charts.

A Paris correspondent of Pro-Boer an inquisit—te turn of mind Journalism, has taken the trouble to go through the last two years' files of "La Patrie," a prominent Parisian journal, and collect the casualty figures published-.from time to time in connection with the South African war. The amazing mass of statistics which has resulted from his laboors forms a striking illustration of the character of the "news'* which some of the Continental papers publish when dealing with the South African war. There have been, by "La PatrieV showing, 1101 battles during the war. The Boers have had 181 killed, including 23 officers, while 300 men and 17 officers on the Boer side have been captured. The list of British soldiers tailed, on the other hand, reaches the amazing total of 3,189,180 mei-t, indudihg 60,000 officers; and tbe captured amount to 190,000 men .and 8000 officers. According to "La PatrieV reports, the Boers must have won 1094 engagements ! and lost only seven ; they must have raptured 2160 guns, 7000 horses and mules, and 813 provision trains, and in their turn lost only 14 guns, 30 horses and mules, and 42 provision twins. Although not a single. Boer leader is reported by "La Patrie" to have been killed, the casualties among the British generals appear to have totalled 71, including five who were killed three times. If this veracious newspaper is to be believed, General Metbnen was killed seven times during the firnt four months of the war! But his was not the only ex-trao-rdina ry experience. General J_ellyKenny, it appears, had his head blown off in three separate engagements, described in"detail by the "Patrie'' correspondents; and before returning to England Lord Roberts had been unfortunate enough to lose five legs and nine right _rms I Lord Kitchener 1 also seems to have fared badly, for up to ' the beginning ot last month he had been assassinated three times by his own men in revenga for the harsh discipline he kept on enforcing. In one week "La, Patrie" has recorded the capture or d/eath of more British troops than there are in South Africa. One begins to understa-d now why pro-Boerism flourishes so hardily on the Coritin—it. *