TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 13984, 6 March 1911, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Mr Edison recently "The Pittshurg told an interviewer Alchemist." that some scientist 'vo-uld yet find out how to make gold, and a journalist thereupon told Mr Edison that, whoever the discoverer might be, he would have to work hard to make more gold than Mr Andrew Carnegie, "The Pittsburg Alchemist." Largo gifte from Mr Carnegie have beootno so numerous that, nowadays, they do not excite much attention, but when the great millionaire gave- a further 10,000,00!) dollars to tho 1,500,000 already given to the Carnegie Institution in Washington, people immediately aeked "What for?" And Mr Carnegie has told them that he looks upon the institution as on© of the greatest successes of modern times, and holds that by the discoveries made by tho scientists working there, it will repay the investment "tenfold in service to the world. , ' Among the many branches of the institution is one at Mt. "Wilson, California, devoted to astronomical investigation, and it is the marvellous success of Professor Hale, at that place, that seems to havo captured Mr Carnegie's admiration. "Consider," he writes, ''the results already achieved at tho great observatory on Mt. Wilson in California, established by the institution, which I visited last year. The institute discovered a young genius in Professor Hale, who adopted entirely new processes, including photography. His first test-plate, taken just before my arrival, revealed 16,000 new worlds, and he has written mc since that his second plate has revealed 60,000 new worlds never seen by man, some of them ten times larger than our sun." ' Mr Carnegie believes that the whole world is going to listen to the young man on the top of Mt. Wilson, and expresses the hope that ho will live long enough to hear the revelations that are to come. As an investment, the. institution does seem to hare paid handsomely. The discoveries of tho institution's yacht Carnegie are of great value. The yacht has been built with bronze substituted for iron, and consequently her magnetic observations are very accurate. During a voyage across the Atlantic* two grave errors were found in the British Admiralty charts, and when returning via the Azores, it,was proved that the captain of a liner wrecked there was not to blame, because he had

kept the correct course marked on the chart, and the chart was from two to three degrees astray. In its two observatories, and fine laboratories, employing in its thirty separate fields of investigation 1500 scientists, tho institution has amply repaid the gencrositv of "The Pittsburg Alchemist."

The immortal statement Nestling that 'Birds in their little Birds. nest agree" was founded

probably upon a limited acquaintance with tho British songbird. Dr. Watts lived before the days when every deviation in bird-morals or manners would find itself exposed in a naturalist's notebook. In Use hungry Antarctic, for instance, tho ekua chicks, two in a nest, while yet in their downy plumage, will fight tooth and nail with one another over some trivial bit of food; and Dr. Wilson has recorded that between the neglect of the parents, the fighting instinct of tho young birds, and the cannibal tenuency of neighbouring skuns, it is a noticeable fact that only one of the two ever survives. Another sad Antarctic story is that of the young Emperor penguin, in a colony where not more than one egg, and so one chicken, is produced amongst ten or twelve adults, who have all an intense desire to sit on something. Consequently the chickens are fought for by so many clumsy nurses, weighing anything up to ninety -pounds, that of tho 77 per cent, who die before they ahed their down, quite half are killed by kindness, and many have escaped from tho turmoil to freeze and starve alone in preference to the pains of being nursed. Thcso two examples are quoted by Mr Pycraft in his new "History of Birds, ,, when dealing with his favourite subject, "Nestling Birds, and What They-Teach." It is melancholy to realise tliat tho death-rate amongst these innocents is a very high one. and especially during tho first few weeks of life. A sudden fall of tem»perature, bush fires, climatic variations of all sorts, will work havoc, oven when no hungry neighbours, or heedless parents, or too many anxious, would-bo parents, assist death's riot amongst the nurseries of tho birdworld. Very sorrowful youngsters, too, are the late-hatched swallows and martins, left in the nest to die, because their parents are unable to resist tho migratory impulse, stranger than their love for this autumnal brood. The duration of nestling helplessness is an interesting enquiry. Most precocious are the Australian megapodes, who emerge from the shell fully fledged, and with tho wing-quills so completely developed that they are ready to fly within nn hour. Some of the smaller perching birds nre ready to become parents themselves at six weeks old! Yet tho albatross and the larger penguins remain in the downy stage for twelve months or so. Americans have gone far Many towards justifying tho Inventions, boast of a Senator that they were the most in-ventive-people on earth. They have invented everything from feeding-bottles to ooffine- One genius invented an apparatus which would rock the cradle, churn butter, and launder clothes simultaneously, by the turning of a crank. The inventor of this marvel died, and a model of it was placed on his grave. This was only one of many amazing concerns that have been duly protected. Orville, the brother of General Grant, invented an apparatus to make the milking of cows easier. His brother said, "Hβ tried the patent on a cow that had no respect for patents, and Orville did not look co pretty when he got through, but he knew a darned sight more!" Inventive geniuses seem to have a grudge against chickens and cats, as well as against cows. Not content with trying to fool motherly hens with falso nesfc eggs, inventors have evolved "chickon-pushers," which, when attached to the claws of garden-roving fowls, push them back to tho rear. That there are more ways than one of killing a cat is proved by tho hundreds of applications that demand protection for cat-killing contrivances. Ono of these was a sheet-iron cat operated by clockwork, with a bellows to produce swelling of the false animal's tail, and at the same time to emit a caterwaul which would emvaken the entire neighbourhood. This "animal" had claws of Steel intended to deal heavy blows to any investigating live feline that might approach it. "Fake" applications are not unknown. Young attorneys have wiled away empty hours by drawing foolish applications, and backing them up by elaborate models, drawing*, and specifications. One of the funniest of these was a specification for an attachable tail for stump-tailed dogs, setting out the miseries of the dog with no tail to wag. These freaks and follies, according to a writer in the latest "Bookman, , ' lie amidst the records of many that were really useful and successful. Tho United Patent Office has records showing tho development of the telephone, the product of the studies made by Dr. Bel!, a recent visitor to New Zealand, in attempts to alleviate the lot of the deaf. Love had its shf\re in tho romance of the telephone, for it was Dr- Bell's sweetheart, whom he afterwards married, who induced him to show his "toy" at the Philadelphia Exhibition. It was the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro, whose enthusiasm won it a place amongst the exhibits. At the present day there are proportionately as many inventors as in the past, and their paths seem to bo becoming less thorny. The Pntont OfSce records show that the great corporations are loaders in promoting new inventions, while the art of advertising is bringing the inventor and capitalist together.