TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14380, 13 June 1912, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

When the children came to

A play in Kensington Gar-Mny-I>ay dons and sail their boats Plot. on the Eound Pond last

May T>ay, they found that during the night a wonderful new thing had mysteriously grown up there; a now thing, yet an old friend, whom all knew and loved. For there, on the shoro of the Serpentine, on tho very sceno of his storied exploits, "yet where tho eye of mortal child had never seen him before, was Peter Pan. The bronzo boy stood on a bronze treotrunk, piping a. merry tnno to an interested audience of bronzo rabbits, squirrels, thrushes, and sparrows, all listening hard with their little bronze cars, whilo wingless fairies clustered around him and wiso old Solomon Caw, who taught Peter how to have a glad heart and yavo him wrinkles about the customs and habits of bird-life, perched tho.ro wide awake on ono sido, just as in the book. Tho great question of tho day, of course, among Peter Pan's small friends, who came in their hundreds to say "How do yon do?" to him and look at him and make r.uro it was really ho and that ho was quite solid and not going to fly away ngain as silently and mysteriously as he had come, was "How did ho get thero?" Tho truth of the matter was, though most of Peter's special friends in short socks and poke bonnets would scout tho notion as sordidly rationalistic, that the whole affair was a sort of May-day plot, tho ringleaders of which wero -Mr J. M. Barrio, Peter's discoverer, and t>ir Georgo Frampton, sculptor, who kidnapped tho elusive boy and prisoned him in bronze on the spot "where ho notv stands. It was a stroke of good luck that Sir George should have pounced on him and caught him just thero on the bank of daisied grass in tho little bay whero Peter's boat "rodo at peace," after his perilous voyage in tho thrush's nest from tho island in tho Serpontino to tho mainland of Kensington—a voyage for ever famous in tho history of navigation. It is rumoured on good authority that Mr Barrio had a terriblo bother to got Peter, who usually hides on the island during tho day, to como and stay on tho mainland. Ono littta admirer of his pleaded very hard to bo allowed to sleep in tho gardens at Peter's feet all night, just to make sure that ho would, not fly away again, and only tho solemn promise of tho gardener who looks after Peter, that ho would bo thoro again tho next day, could induce him to toddle away with his nurse. Seriously, Mr Barrio's gift to London's childhood of the statue of tho immortal boy "who nover grew up" is ono of tho pleasnntest things that wo have heard of his doing.

In a barren and desoA Land late land like Alaska,

of lying as it does in Fire* and Ice- tho Arctio Circle,

washed by tho icy waters of tho Bohring Sea and tho Arctic Ocean, and possessing glacial tracts of an extent unparalleled on the American continent, tho existence of a great volcanic system seems an anomaly. Yot this system, far from being irozen out by tho arctic cold, is showing itsolf very much alive, as tho cablo messages of tho last few days inform us. Alaska's volcanic activity is considered tho most remarkable in the western hemisphere. Tho entire southern peninsula, and tho Aleutian Islands which terminate tho tongue-like projection eastward aro really nothing bub a thousand-milo long series of volcanoes, extlncb, dormant, or active. Hero, as Dr. Grewingk romarked in 1850, within the limits of a Einglo century, all tlie known phenomena of volcanic activity have occurred; tho elevation ot mountain chains and islands, tho sinking of extensive areas of tho earth's surface, earthquakes, eruptions, hot springs, and explosions of steam and sulphuric gases. Volcanic action lias occurred on no less than 2-"i of the 'Aleutian Islands, leaving forty-eight craters to mark tho scenes of its violence." Four volcanic islands in the Bearing Sea havo been formed during eruptions within tho last century and a quarter. Tho eruptions consist ot «?jections of nshes, stono3, and liquid mud, but jarely or never of lava-ilows from the craters. Tho Aleutian range, which is the causo of tho present trouble, is an assemblage of volcanic cones, and dominates tho southern coast and tho island of Kodiak, which is separated from the mainland by the .Strait of Shelikof. Kodiak itself is a largo rugged island with a population ot about a thousand, Americans, Russians, Creoles, and Indians. It is the site of tho first Alaskan trading post, and a commercially important place. Fish-ciinning and fox-i'arming arc the chief industries of the island, which is also not-iKI for possessing the biggest species of boar in the world, the ''great Kotfiak bear." Treeless, sav o on the eastern coast, tho isltmd with its smooth hills covered with wild ilowcrs antl luxuriant verdure, is a really beautiful spot, and has been compared by one writer to tho Isle of "\\ ight, while Burroughs, in his book on Alaska, hails Kodiak as "a mingling of the domestic, tho pastoral, tho sylvan, with tho wild and rugged," in short, as a unali earthly paradise.