Page 4 Advertisements Column 7

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 143, 18 June 1906, Page 4

All informal application for protection against an unspecified police sergeant ■was made this morning to Dr. M' Arthur, S.M., by one John Burke O'Brien, .a wild-eyed, grey-bearded, educated vagrant, who has run the round of polico courts in various parts of the colony. He told the Magistrate that he was recently discharged from the Torraco Prison after serving a month's imprisonment that should n6t have been inflicted upon him, and now he was being pestered and hunted by a sergeant of police. Lately he had been stopping at the Salvation Army Home, but last night ho was studying astronomy. Why should a man be followed by a sergeant for that? He asked the court for a protection order. Dr. M'Arthur surmised thata prohibition order was meant. Eventually the applicant left the court with. 'an assurance (as informal as his own application) that h» was under the courfii pjotectiot. Englishwomen who succeed in passing' university examinations in their own country, but are refused degrees by Oxford and Cambridge (writes the London correspondent of the Age), now go over in shoals to the Dublin University, and solace themselves with the titular labeln bestowed tihere impartially on qualified students' of both sexes. At this year's spring session no fewer than 150 of them applied for degrees, outnumbering the men by about three to one. It) was a curious sight, and without precedent. Dublin was amused, and its journalists, with traditional Irish courtesy, refer to them with lavish compliments. "I shouldn't be in the least surprised," Bays one of them, "if some of these sweet girl graduates settled down in Ireland to a. junction which has a very far-off relation indeed with, say, scientific explanations of the different- calculus. As a matter o£ fact, a very large number of, theso young Englishwomen were good looking, and im every way delightful." According to the report of the Marlborough Express of the action J. A* Connell, late editor Maryborough Herald,, v. proprietors of that journal,' a claim for damages for wrongful dismissal, Mr. Justice Dennisfcon made some strong remarks towards the close, of the hearing. His Honour said that anything more puerile than the class of evidence which had been brought to justify tha defence laid had never come under his notice. There had been nothing (shown beyond a mere suggestion that tho claimant might have been a little mora judicious and diplomatic. He could onlysay that the attempt to damage a man's reputation with such, a trumpery defence was nothing short of scandalous. Mr. Myers, for the defence, addressed the Judge at length, quoting eeveral cases, principally as to the question of notict and the amount of damages warranted.. Mr. Conolly's reply was brief. The de« fendants had not only attempted to dam* age a man's character, but to vary a written agreement by bringing forward an alleged collateral verbal agreement. His Honour said it was pretty clear? that "these gentlemen were determined to bring all the legal devices withia reach to bear upon claimant's reputation. He did not • feel clear enough on th« point as to how far the various conversations in which claimant was alleged to have agreed to dismissal without notice should nGect his decision, and would therefore reserve judgment until he got back to Wellington. That would be about 27th instant. The death, in March last, of Professor S. P. Langley, removed one of the most interesting figures in contemporary physical science. The late professor achieved eminence in many branches of physics, but there are two in which he was facila princeps, viz., the investfgation of solar heat and the 6tudy of aerodynamics. His brilliant invention of the bolometer (an instrument with which change* of -temperature amounting only to the millionth part of a degree can be measured witi precision), allowed him to study tho problem of solar radiation far more accurately than previous observers were able to do. As a result, he was able to determine tha intensity of each of the different coloured rays which make up the white light of the sun, and to discover a whole army of heat rays previously unknown. By performing his experiments when the sun was near the horizon, and when it was high above it, h© succeeded in measuring tha proportion of solar light and heat, ol every wave-length, absorbed in the at-, mosphere, and so to prove that the truo colour of the sun, as seen from at point in free space, is blue; it looks white or yellowish to us simply because our atmosphere absorbs the blue rays most power* fully. In the domain 'of aerodynamics Langley had long been studying the phenomena of flight, and actually constructed a practical flying-machine. It is generaly admitted that his investigations will form the starting point of all future attempts to solve the problem of artificial flight, and it is much to be regretted that he did not live to complete them. In the Sydney Morning Herald Mr. Howard Ashton writes forcibly on ths gambling habit as a cause of national degeneracy. "We- find callow youths," he says, "\vho do not know an amble from a. trot, and who certainly could not sit at a gallop, trusting their money to the speed of a horse because others have, trusted theirs, and relying on the honesty ' of men they do not know by name — men, who arc certainly monetarily interested in the result. And, alas! what a bore is this same callow youth, whose only argument is the fool's one of a wager. Does a point crop up to be debated— "l bet yer." One finds him in the trams and in tho barber's, and upon the street corner as the city puts on its mantle of dusk. And his talk is all "horse." Whether "Glanders" will win the V.R.C. or "Ringbone" the "Caulfield." How the odds on "Bumblefoot" have gone up on account of stable backing, and how lie — hero he smacks his chest — has the acumen to "get his bit on" wLile the books were "handing out 21 to 1." Mentally he is a turnip ; physically he is a weed. When on» sees large numbers of him one cannot feel with Varro, n-hom the Senate thanked "because he dirt not despair of the Republic" after Thrusymene. Yet thuS foolish creature will tell any one that the Japanese are an inferior race to him, and ho will wonder how his ability haa not brought him a salary of £300 -a year. Put three of these loafing fatalists against one small, compact Japanese, filled with fierce pride in his country and confidence in its high aims, and— it is a sorrowful thing to have to say — he would have them running or begging for mercy in five seconds. "Non his juventus orta parentibus. . . ." In his "Modern Symposium," Mr. Q. Lowes Di&kenson has some striking remarks ou^ American aims and characteristics. "To be always moving, and always moving faster, that they think is the beatific life. If they or© asked 'by Europeans, as they sometimes are, What is the point of going co fast? their only feeling is one of genuine astonishment. Why, they reply, you go fast. And what more can be said? Hence their contempt for tho leisure so much valued by Europeans. Leisure they feel to b© a kind of standing still, the unpardonable sin." They say: "Wo have no religion, .literature, or art ; we don't know whence we come, nor whither wo go; but, what is more im. portant, w© don't care. What we do know is that we are moving faster than any ono ever moved before; and that there is every chnnco of our mbving faster and faster. The principle of the Uni. verse is acceleration, and wo are its cx> poncutsj and if we cannot answer ultimate questions, that is the less to be regretted in that a few cetnuries hence there will bo nobody left to ask them."