TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14658, 6 May 1913, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Wind and weather are Nature's Nature's implements in her Pruning, annual task of tree prun-

ing. Not only leaves, but twigs end branches have to fail, n the whole tree is not to become a denst mass resembling a lingo solid besom, a witch's broom, such as is found some-

times disfiguring the "lady" birch. In a very interesting magazine article, written and illustrated by Henry Irving, there is a calculation of how much growth would follow in ten years from one single shoot, assuming that there was no natural check upon a tree's increase. Starting from a ehoot possessing one terminal and two lateral buds, he shows that while in its second year it will produce three formal shoots, each again possessing at the least one terminal anil two lateral buds, by tho end of the tenth year there will bo the surprising number of 19.G33. as tho direct outgrowth of tho primary single shoot. "Each treo would thus be a solid mound of witches' brooms, and nothing else, if we could, I by stretch of imagination, conceive it as completing ten years of such multiplication. Within- much less than tho half of a hundred years, the production of branches, at this rate, would be such that no terms of ours could express their multitude.'' Tho disadvantage would be that no treo could live out the first ten years, beinp; early smothered in iis own excess. In actual fact no ten-year-old branch will be found to bear more than some two hundred such outgrowths. "So effective are the existing chocks upon increase that for every hundred resulting twigs-that-might-be. one only survives." Spring winds are. the first operators. They exercise, a drying influenco upon tho swelling shoots, ■. which results in a steady and persistent disbudding. "Multitudes of buds are literally 'sucked dry. , " Tho sap supply is diverted from these, and goes to nourish the comparative few which happen to ' survive. Later, the superfluous growth is again reduced by lack of light, certain under-boughs being bound to perish in tho shade. ]yost actual pruning proceeds in tho ordinary way. Poplars, oaks, and willows undergo their annual lopping as Nature decrees, tho ground beneath them being strewn with fallen branches and twigs. Wind, hail, a-nd heavy rain are excellent priming knives. Frost, snow, insects, birds, are also agencies by which tho production of twigs and branches is kept back, and hard seasons, apparently inimical and injurious to the life of trees, may bo supremely necessary for their health and vigour, securing space for each branch it retains to become a shapely and graceful figure, over and about which tho air and light havo free play

Tho wide-spread ignorA anco of elementary facts Neglected about tho stars is deScionco. plored by Miss Mary E-

Byrd in an article in "Popular Astronomy," an American publication. "Nature Study" is

taught in the schools, so far as it relates to forms of plant and animal life, and to tho surface features of the earth, but as for the heavenly bodies, declares Miss Byrd, generations of children grow up knowing less about the stars than tho negroes in Central Africa. Educated people are frequently to be met with who cannot tell a planet from a star or whether tho now moon is rising or setting. Few realise that tho sun crosses tho sky in a different path on each succeeding day, and fewer still connect these changes, ■which arc continually going on before their eyes, with the change of tlio seasons. In fact, the writer asserts, it would be difficult to ask five questions about tho heavenly bodies so simple that two or three out of a company, generaly well-informed, could get 50 per cent, of marks. Jn advocating as a remedy for this ignorance, the introduction of astronomical instruction into schools as a regular thing. Miss Byrd combats one or two popular notions about the science which she holds to be fallacious. One is the idea that astronomy and a telescope are inseparable. Tho human eye alone is no mean astronomical instrument. It achieved much before the invention of tho telescope, and it also gives a grasp of the whole subject, showing the relation and connection of different parts, ' and thus serving to lay tho broad foundations for tho study of tho hoavens. In any case, -whether astronomy is specially taught in the schools or not, there is very little excuse, considering the facilities for the cheap acquisition of scientific knowledge now-a-days, for anyone who holds himself educated knowing nothing about the stars which are nightly spread bofore his gaze.

Admiral Tirpitz, nick"Tirpitz, named "the Eternal," the because for fourteen Eternal." years ho has held tho

position of Secretary of Stato for tho German Navy, is a remarkable personality. No other German Minister but Bismarck has succeeded in weathering tho storms of political life for so long a period. This grizzled, fork-beardod old synan, has played the foremost part in the upbuilding of the great German Navy. The London "Daily Mail's ,, Berlin correspondent cives an interesting outline of the activities of this powerful organiser, through whose efforts tho •'supplementary legislation" has raised the Fatherland's fleet expenditure by steady stages from £6,000,000 in 1898 to £23,000,000 in 1913. "It would libel yon Tirpitz." says Mr Wile, u to stigmatise him as Anglophobo. Ho is anything but that. Ho is a profound admirer of everything British. All his children havo been educated in England. English naval traditions command his reverential respect, and ho has never ceased to hold them up to German sailormen as a. model and inspiration." Till yon Tirpitz took hold of tho Admiralty, German naval conditions were moro or less chaotic. His first achievement wns tho conception of the programme. Then he was confronted with the herculean task of popularising it, and of manipulating public sentiment from time to time, whenever the moment was ripe for extending tho ramifications of ! tho original project. "The triumphs of I tho Navy League and of the Admiralty Press Bureau —the conversion of tho j nation to a religious belief in its 'bitier need' of sea-power, and in its •future on the water,' are," adds the correspondent, "the triumphs of yon Tirpitz. Ho may himself disavow them, as he does so persuasively and adroitly from his place in the Reichstag on recurring occasions, but the laurels are his for all that. The pamphlets and Press polemics and periodcial campaigns which always precede and accompany German naval increases bear far too plainly the earmarks of a directing genius to be identified with anybody but 'Tirpitz the Eternal.' r.