SUN BATHING AND SEA BATHING.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 133, 2 December 1904, Page 6

SUN BATHING AND SEA BATHING.

TO TH-i; EDITOR. Sir — The advocates of the sun bath as a hygienic agent have spread their doctrines and practice widely during the past generation or two. Following on the &ea bath it is highly beneficial and enjoyable. It is well known, however, that exposure to the sun in wet trunks or jerseys is injurious. The evaporation from the wet clothing creates a. chill, which acts prejudicially on the liver, and produces catarrh of various internal orgaus. A person taking a sun bath after coming out of the water should first strip off all wet coverings. Many of us have been used for the lost 25 of 30 years to enjoy the sun bath after the sea at both Thorndon and Te Aro. Judge of our dismay in finding that in future we are to be debarred from appearing outside the dressing rooms at Thorndon without bathing costumes, thus being relegated to the cold shade and deprived of the great luxury and enjoyment of the sun batli. The alleged objection is that certain ladies now reside on the hulks which are moored about half a- mile off the batlis .occasionally.

There are remedies which might be adopted to lemoie the objection. The Harbour Board might be moved to moor the hulks and ladies a few chains further south, or the City Council might be induced to put a 4ft palisade fencing around the open ends and sides of tho baths ; and we hope your kind solicitude for the public health and enjoyment may be exerted to secure for us a continuance of our long-enjoyed privilege of taking the sun "in puris naturalibus," as it ought to be taken to secure the greatest benefit and enjoyment from it. The hulks are moored too far off the baths for one to observe the ladies with the naked eye. I am therefore unable to vouch for the accuracy of the statements made as to their presence ; and I have a shrewd suspicion that they are a myth, and that this last restriction is merely a part of the great system specially developed by the Government to interfere with personal liberty in every path of life. Instead of a reasonable system of police to prevent crime and disorder, we are creating a great body of officials whose business it is to formulate laws and issue regulations to enable them to justify their existence and promulgate their fads by interference in all the petty details of business, pleasure, and existence. "W© strain at gnats and swallow camels freely. The Government sanctions a widespread system of gambling with the totalisatof, while by recent enactments the man who plays a harmless game of billiards at which the loser pays for the table is liable to be punished aa a gambler! The chemist can sell throughout the colony devices, chemical and mechanical, enabling the youth of both sexes to escape the re&ults of undesirable irregularities, but the vendor of Cockle's pills is to be debarred from his trade because the label does not set forth the formula, which not one man in ten thousand would understand if he read it. We are having it vigorously rubbed into us by the übiquitous and obstinate official that this country New Zealand is, as Bishop Heber unkindly described Ceylon, a place where "every prospect pleases, arid only man is vile," and that onr only hope of salvation lies in our being held in perpetual subjection and bondage by a 'despotic Government, assisted by an army of self-opiniated officers and inspectors, who Arill prescribe for us not only what we shall eat ,and what we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed, but 'will determine for us our spiritual views, and compel us, as of old, to regulate our religious observances by their formulae and bylaws. — I am, etc., x.x.x. Wellington, 26th November, 1904. The Customs revenue collected at the port to-day totalled £911 135. The R.M.S. Sonoma, with British mails of the 19th of November, left San Francisco on the lst of December, at 4 p.m., due date. "Tolerant" writes to the Otago Daily Times concerning the complaint about the Premier galloping about Mornington when people were coming out of church. "Tolerant" says that it is untrue in the iiisb place that' the Premier galloped down the hill, as with 18 stone up that would be cruelty to animals and risky to the Premier's neck; secondly, when he did ride down the hill, it was a few minutes to 1 p.m., when most of the congregations were at Sunday dinner. Even if a solitary clergyman was at hand, he could not bo held to constitute "three congregations of the Mornington churches." That which is done for the health's sake on, the Sabbath Day is nojj breaking the Sabbath, and "the fact that Mr. Seddon was in chapel on Sunday afternoon may, it is to be hoped, atone somewhat for his having riding exercise, taken on the advice of his doctors, on Sunday morning." Mr. Hugh M'llraith, formerly member of the House of Representatives for Cheviot, whose sudden death in Christchurch was announced on Wednesday, was bro-ther-in-law of Mr. H. M. Lyon, Secretary of the Wellington Underwriters' Association, having married a daughter of the late Mr. W. Lyon in Wellington in 1864. Mr. M'llraith was born in Ayrshire in 1836, and was brought up to pastoral pursuits. He went out to Australia when nineteen years of age, but since 1856 he had been a settler in Canterbury, whei'e he engaged in sheep farming for a great many years.. At one time he was Pre&ident of the New Zealand Trotting Association and Chairman of the Amuri Road Board, and he was a life member of the Canterbury A. and P. Association. He has left a grownup family of four sons and five daughters. Messrs. Macdonald, Wilson and Co. announce the sale, on Tuesday next, at 1 o'clock, at the family residence, No. 15, Macdonald-crescent, of the entire- household furnishings, contents of ten rooms. The advertisement of the sale of 143 sections, Petone, comprising the Show Grounds Estate, to be sold on the 14th inst. appears. Plans can be had on application, and intending buyers will find every section marked by a flag bearing the number of same.