RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 67, 12 December 1932, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

A judge admits that some laws are hard on married men. Some married, men contend that some ip-laws are harder.

The debt instalment from Britain to America will be paid in gold bars. Other countries are still hopeful that the whole thing can be put off with & few Notes.

Perhaps it is true, as the Mayor of Wellington declares, that the State is no more than a collection of householders, but with income tax and unemployment tax sometimes it looks more like a collection from householders.

In a recent “Dominion” there was a paragraph entitled “Relic of Lord Nelson,” writes F. Ledger, Nelson. This gives a copy Of Nelson’s entry in a visitors’ book at Prague, giving' liis titles, and spelling Bronte with an “e.” Almost on the same date the town clerk. Nelson, received an inquiry as to whether Bronte was correctly spelt on a plan submitted to the Public Works Department by me as regards the street of that name in Nelson. Bronti (with an “i”) is the way the street name is spelt on this plan. I have also seen a facsimile of Lord Nelson’s signature (in the possession of an old gentleman named Langley Bell in this city), spelling Bronte with the “e.” It appears from the paragraph, “relic of Lord Nelson,” above-mentioned, that the King of Naples conferred, the title “Duke of Bronte” on Lord Nelson, and that makes me think that Bronti (with an “i”) is the correct spelling- Can you throw any light on the point as to which is the correct spelling, as applied to Lord Nelson’s title, “Duke of Bronte”?

[The town of that name in Sicily is spelled with an “e’’.l

Watchers with huge tom-toms that can be heard five miles away are said to be on guard among the hills of the disaffected Indian State of Alwar, to report the' movements of troops. In. this case the methods used in the socalled “bush-telegraph” are patent. There is nothing mysterious about them. The marvellous long distance signalling of tribes, especially in Central Africa, has had many explanations. Some messages are transmitted long distances by drums, some by smoke fires. But there are other instances that cannot be explained away in so material a manner. It is related that in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, during the Boer War, native “house-boys” knew of incidents that were occurring round Ladysmith, 500 miles away, on the morning that they actually occurred. Nobody has ever explained how this, could be. The 500 miles separating the two places is for the most part impenetrable bush, huge mountain ranges, and utterly empty veldt. It is futile to hazard guesses, but it looks as if some illiterate savages know a thing or two more than their civilised cousins.

Many efforts have been made to solve the mysterious manner in which natives in South Africa transmit messages over huge distances as quickly as the electric telegraph. The older natives quite candidly declare that the power of communicating news instantly across incredible distances has been known to them for centuries. How the power operates they say is a mystery even to themselves. It is said that to the younger generations this power is a lost art. Nevertheless, no so long ago. in fact a few years after the war, certain native warriors in South Africa were hastily enlisted and transported hundreds of miles. Some three months after their departure the white commissioner, who happened to be at their home kraal, was awakened by a great wailing and beating of funeral drums. When he asked what was the matter the head man replied, “There has been a big battle to-day in Somaliland (SOO miles away). Our company has been cut up. Sergeant Kanemba is killed, with a lance-corporal and 14 privates. Corporal Ndoro, with two others, is badly wounded.” In five weeks’ time official news came by telegraph, telephone, train, boat, and runner that confirmed this statement in every detail. Perhaps readers know of other instances.

When Madame Tetrazzini sang a duet with the recorded voice of Caruso in a London shop a small round disc bridged a gulf between the living and the dead that would have been considered stark magic one hundred years ago. So perfect has the art of recording voices become that all manner of novel records have been made already. ‘lf the recent duet by Tetrazzini and Caruso links the living and the dead so effectively, one can but wonder the effect on his relations of a dead man reading out his own will. Yet this was done by a clergyman who died some four years ago. Now Mr. Christopher Stone, the gramophone expert attached to the British Broadcasting Company, has raised a nice little legal problem by insisting upon making his own will in the same way and asking if it is a good will in law. If a record is not a legal way of making a will, at least judges before now have accepted records as evidence. In one recent case the shrieks of a circular saw, duly recorded, were played before the noble judge so that he might sample the sound.

Not only can we to-day embalm sound so that years afterwards we may hear the dead singing, but we can also embalm light. Those curious marriage photographs one meets in nearly every home represent an early effort to embalm light rays. But to-day we can make the dead walk as well as talk. What we cannot do, however, is to listen-in to what the dead talked and looked like before the gramophone and the moving pictures were with us. Some people declare that the time is not far distant when this actually may occur. After all. one can take a photograph of a star, rhe light from which represents what the star was like nearly a million years ago. Once a vibration starts mathematicians declare that it never dies away to nothing. Somewhere there must be the component vibrations of the Battle of Hastings and Henry VIII sacking his fifth wife. These vibrations have been seeding through the ether for hundreds of years at the rate of 186.000 miles a second. Where they are to-day who can tell? Speech, however, being transmitted through air may be not so impossible to overtake Confined to the air. the clash of battle In 1066 has been bounding round ths world ever since at the rate of only 600 miles an hour.