NEWS AND NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 66, 15 September 1906, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES.

"A hatless lady at morning service at Trinity Church, Dover, was tho subject of a public rebuke from the rector. "Women with heads uncovered," he declared, "were not fitting worshippers of th© Almighty in his house." Some might think that ladies with slaughtered birds in their hats were graver offenders still. x I Eight large storks in flight, their feathers aflame, writes tbo Berlin correspondent of the Daily M.ail, astonished tho yillagors of Kahlwehlen, in East Russia, on whose straw roofs the birds wore apparently about to~ alight the other day. It appears that a nest on the outskirts of Kahlwehlen, where the birds had > for years made - their home, was struck by lightning during a storm, and nest ana stories set aflame. "There is to-day, (according to Professor Ray Lankester) a less widespread interest in natural history and general science, outside the strictly professionalarena. The field naturalists among the squires and the country parsons seem not to be so numerous, and Mechanics' Institutes and Lecture v Societies have given place, to a very large extent, to musical performances, bioscopes, and other entertainments, manufactured 'gaiety, sent out from the great centres of fashionable amusement to the provinces and rural districts." For the first time in the history of the Port of London a cargo of tea has been discharged by electricity. Recently the Huntsman, of the Harrison Line, arrived in London Docks from Calcutta laden' with tea, which was unloaded on a -system of continuous rollers worked by. electricity. The chests were placed on the rollers and conveyed from the ship's hold to the storage shed without intervention by men or tho existing hydraulic machinery. The new process obviates breakages of chests, hitherto very numerous, and reduces the number of men employed. A curious, hiding-place for valuable securities is alleged to have been adopted in a case in which a well-known Brighton publican, .Richard Milchard, was charged on the 31st July with concealing assets worth nearly £5000. At his bankruptcy proceedings where debts of £8000 were shown, he had | sworn that ho has no assets. Suspicions were aroused, and under a warrant his house was searched. A female searcher examined tho wife, and found that her corsets were lined with stock certificates, which, being sold, realised £4,700. This stock had just previously been bought by Milchard, and formed the. main part of the assets he is alleged not to have disclosed. The Baptist Missionary Society has received a cable message reporting the death of the well-known Congo missionary, th© Rev. George Grenfell, at Bassoko, on Ist July, from the black water fever. Mr. Grenfel 1 was one of the founders of the Congo Mission, and discovered the Mopangi River, for which be was awarded th© gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. He was entrusted by the late Mr. Robert Arthington with the great task of linking up the stations of the Baptist Society with those of the Church Missionary Society in Uganda, and ranked as one of the greatest of modern missionaries and explorers. Professor Ray Lankester, questioned by a Daily Mail representative at York recently regarding a report that he was to retire from the directorate of South Kensington Museum, said that he had not received any "request" to retire. "It is the 'ordinary official action," he added, implying that his retirement was absolute and compulsory. "I understand," writes the correspondent, "that lie has received a notice to quit which he has not the power to refuse. No reason has been assigned, and^ the professor has no knowledge of the moti^ of the authorities beyond his assumption that they have discovered that he is sixty years of age." It is perhaps twenty years since Mark Twain in one of his most farcical flights of irreverent humour, gave a (supposed) old sea-captain's exegesis of the miracle on Mount Carmel. The water in the trench, he explained, was kerosene, and tho prophet, having "struck a match on his pants," set it alight. It seems almost incredible, but F. H. Bokewell, in ths Nineteenth Century, propounds the identical theory, except that he uses the word "naphtha" — the crude article. The "cloudy pillar" in the desert, according to the same authority, was produced by "a large petroleum lamp." When BibficaJ "criticism" is content to plagiarise from professional hpmourists, it "has surely reached its lowest depths, and can no longer expect to bo taken seriously. Sale and leasing of children is said by the London police to bo not uncommon. A young girl was not long ago sold to a negro by her mother, and rescued by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. There is a great traffic among the begging confraternity and th© greatest difficulty exists in tracing the cases and in obtaining evidence which would havo legal value. In the case of the organ-grinders who carry children about with them in cradles fixed to their organs, it is certain that these poor little things are hired just as is the ogan, and since the unemployed appeal has become popular the practice has extended. Selfstyled working men ttfrn out with organs with the whole family attendant upon them hired for tho occasion. The sale and purchase of a little eight-year-old girl was revealed at the.Neath County Police Court on Ist August. The transaction took place between the girl's father, George Would, of No. 1, Siding-terrace, Skewen, and Mrs. Rose LovelT, a gypsy, and the sale price was 2s 6d. Th© following letter was written by tho father: — "I do give my child to Mrs. Rose Lovell in her care, and to be answerable for her care for good, and i don't want to take her back again after she has been clothed and dressed, and i do singe my name and never to take her back again, and she is to rite to me once a month to let me no how she's getting on, and i have singed my hand this day, June 20th, 1906, never to have her back again. — George Albert Would." The matter came to light through the girl and her older brother being charged with stealing poultry. Tho boy was committed to a reformatory and the little girl to a cottage home. Mr. A. G. Munn writes from Weisbaden in the Daily Mail: — How is it that in Germany, which has the reputation of being a strictly governed country, a tourist is not only permitted, but invited, by notices on trees, etc., to wander over all the innumerable beauty rts, including such favoured parts as Harz, Schwarzald, Thuringia, Saxon and Bohemian Switzerland, tho Rhine district, etc., whereas in our own cbuntry — the proverbial home of libertyhe is not allowed to forget for ten consecutive minutes that he is a possible trespasser, that a dog is somewhere lurking for his destruction, or that the local landlord is doing a brisk trade in barbed wire. Liberal England may bo in many ways— certainly so to the alien — but when it comes to the right to roam over his own country, tho Englishman with th© knapsack has only a poor time of it in comparison with his German cousin, who has thousands upon thousands of acres — glorious forests many of them — where the latter is practicallx monarch of all be ourvsio»

A London nerve specialist lately gave himself a bad advertisement. He failed to meet his creditors at the Bankruptcy Court, and the meeting had -to bs adjourned.- The plea put in for his absence .was "suffering from nervous complaint." In fining a motorist in England, Colone' Coates, the presiding magistrate, declined to allow time for payment, and said, to defendant, "If you can keep those infernal things you can afford to pay fines." He characterised the defendant and others like him as pests to society who did not care over whom they ran. The Blackburn Parks Committee have asked th© town council to rescind - a resolution for the creation of sandpatches for the children in the public parks. The medical officer has condemned "artifical beaches" on sanitary grounds. He points out that the lack of the cleansing tides which flow over the natural sands is a grave objection. __ "What shall I do with this, sir?" asked a constable, at Marlborough-street holding out a bottle of morphia taken from a prisoner who had just been bound over. "'I should think," said Mr. Dcnman, the magistrate, "that the united wisdom' of your superior officers might be able to direct you. Surely there is a drain or a sink at the police station." Th© "pride, poverty, and a piano" class (says the Bakers' Times) are often tho greatest sinners in the matter of getting into debt. It touches tho pride and dignity of this class to ask them to pay the bread bill. The credit question is tho most difficult question for the trade to deal with. It is unwise (writes Health) to encourage the selfish exactions of sick people. If they aro allowed to believe that- they cannot do this, and cannot stand that, they will gradually lose all powers 'of resistance and endurance. Such a person develops into a tyrant, ruining the peace and happiness of an entire family. The proposed abolition of the motorcar speed limit (saya tho Bystander) has, we understand, caused much dissatisfaction among the Surrey constabulary, who fear that if it comes into force they will bo compelled to revert to the detection of crime. Speaking lately in London on tho vivisection blot, Admiral Sir William Kennedy said it was a matter of gratification that these experiments on animals were not practised so much in Britain as in other countries. Abroad they wore practised not only by men but by women — he could not call them ladies. He had heard of a Miss Lydia Drewitt practising vivisection. Thank God, she lived not in this country, but in the United States of America. The crux of the Transvaal question, writes Edgar Wallace, lies in this : — Of the thirty-live- scats given to the country and Pretoria, thirty-three are certain solid Boer seats, and two at tho most, at Barb.evton and Pretoria, are likely to return others wan those pledged to the programme of Het Voile. The greatest danger to British supremacy lies on the Band _ itself , where the political parties are divided into two camps — one ready to further its ends by identifying itself with the Boers. Under this Constitution the Boers must secure a permanent majority of eighth or ten at least. Mr. T. Kettle, just returned for East Tyrone by a microscopical majority (says the Westminster Gazette) bears a name with which a story is connected — a story illustrative of Mr. ParnelPs la&k of the sense of humour. Mr. Kettle's father is a venerable Nationalist, who has been associated with the popular side of Irish politics, for some forty year 3. Alluding to this in the course of a speech, Mr. Parnell remarked that "the name of Kettle was a household word 'all over Ireland." He did not betray the faintest recognition of his own joke, but tho audience saw it, and Mr. Parnell wondered what they were laughing at. Dr. Ethel Williams, a lady doctor, sp^oko before tho British Association ox compulsory medical examination w of school children, and said that she had always found she could have her way by appealing to a mother's pride. "If you tell her that anaemia, an open mouth caused by adenoids, bad teeth, and awful squints are defects of beauty in her girl which no amount of feathers and gaudy colours can correct, and that her child can only be beautiful by being healthy, you will do far more good than by any appeals to her maternal duty. Touch her vanity and she succumbs." Champagne (a contemporary writes) seems destined almost, to disappear from the dinner tables of England. Tho sybarites — a comparatively small class at any_ time. — continue to use io, and- iis traditional distinction is such that the organisers of public banquets /have not yet mustered up tho nervo to oxclude it from their selected lists , of wines; but there is a great Dody of well-to-do consumers who have ceased to use champagne cither through mistrust as to its p^j-ity, or a conclusion that the prices charged for it are altogether out of proportion to its actual merits. A correspondent of a Dunedin paper declares that the "first aid" rendered by well-intentioned but blundering bystanders nearly killed the miners 'lately rescued from the Molyneux pit. The unfortunates, he says, were "cremated, baked, and branded by hot applications, sufficiently hot enough to slip through bags like greased lightning, and later on to fire dungaree pants lovingly placed over the bricks to keep the 'cold . air' from the bodies." Nor was tho burning of the flesh all tho inscnsiblo miners had to suffer. "Demented creatures poured boiling coffee down their gullets. It will be many weeks yet bofore two of the victims of kindness are fit to again face tho battles of life behind the pick." Sir George O'Brien, who has bequeathed half his modest fortune for tho bodily welfare of Westminster School boys (says tho Westminster Gazette) was always an enthusiastic Old Westminster, and when in England on furlough never failed to revisit his old school as the guest of' Dr. Scott, of whom he had been a favourite disciplo. Kilkenny Cathedral also benefits by his will. ' Since his retirement from the Colonial service Sir George O'Brien nad resided in the diocese of Kilkenny, at Castle Morrea, Knocktopher. He was himself a "son of tho sanctuary," for nis father, Dr. O'Brien, had been Bishop of Ossory and Ferns in the days of the Established Church. British botanists — a gallant oand who have won much credit for their country — (says the Sydney Mail) sustain severo loss by tho death of Mr. W. Mitten, a veteran who was one of the few survivors of Darwin's generation. M«. Mitten, who passed away at his Sussex homo in his eighty-eighth year, had published no masterpiece ; but the fruits of his accurate research will be found in such works as Sir J. D. Hooker's "Flora of Now Zealand." Ho specialised in mossc3 and allied families on which h© was a great authority, and classified the mosses for the Challenger expedition. Specialism seems some- j times tho enemy of culture, but Mr. Mitten had many varied intellectual interests ; and, although middle-aged at tho time oi tho "ecaro," ho wa3 ona of the oarhen recruit* foi tho Volun"taws* ' "

A Birmingham hairdresser, who was fined for using his premises for betting purposes, had for many weeks outwitted the police. A little slot had been cut in front of the shop window, and through this were passed betting slips, which went down* a shoot to a bag in the cellar. A correspondent of the Otago Beacon says that young women in Dunedin offices are persecuted by anonymous miseroants who send them lewd postal cards with coarse jests upon them. In some cases, the employers refuse to receive them ; in others they aro passed in from clerk to clerk until they reach the person addressed. In some cases the victim has had the additional humiliation of an admonition from the firm. He thinks that the post office should protect girls from such an annoyance. A writer in Outing recently wrote that tho pugnacious little sparrow was susceptible to kindness, and would do much >o relieve an ailing member of his family. For several days this observer noted that four or five sparrows would visit a particular place on tho roof near his window, and they alwaya brought food for a little feathered friend, who never tried a flight from the spot. The visitors never cam© empty-billed, but would drop tiny morsels of food near the little sparrow, and when it commenced to eat they would sefc up a great chirping and then fly away. It was subsequently discovered that tho one who was fed was blindjits eyes being covered with a milky-white film. The Red Rivet Rebellion of the early seventies, which brought Colonel (pow Visoount) Wolsoky and Captain (how General 'Sir William) Butler into prominence ia recalled by the death of Mrs. Kiel, recorded in the Canadian papetu. Sho was tho mother of Louis Riel, the leader of tho rebel half-breeds, and had attained the ago of 86. Riel escaped across the border into tho United. States on that occasion, but in. 1885 he headed a second rebellion in North-Western Canada, was captured, and executed. By a coincidence Gabriel Dumount, who was Riol'e chief lieutenant, died almost simultaneously with Mrs. Rial, at the age of 68 The late- Mr. Pillsbury (says the Globe) was cortainly ono of the greatest chess players who ever lived, and will occupy a place beside Morphy and Zukertort. The mental affliction which came upon him last April raised a great controversy as to whether chess- as ha played it would not necessarily tend to induce insanity. It must be rememberer, however, that the strain ho put upon himself was altogether outside and beyond that required of even the finest exponent of the ordinary game. Mr. Pillsbury has been known to conduct twenty simultaneous games blindfold, and any one who has cvor attempted even a singk. game without seeing the board will understand tha gigantic effort of memory and of concentration which such a feat involved. •Presence^ of mind is always an asset; it is specially valuable in presence of danger such as springs from the presence of men intent upon murder. This wa« never better exemplified than when a fang of men set out to take the lifo of lazzroi. He got to hear of their project. All the precautions he took were to get ready a store of very excellent cigars The ruffians presently appeared at his address. " Come in, gentlemen," he said, and produced his cigars. To each man ho handed one. Taken aback at their reception, they seemed abashed ana confused. " I know that you came to kill me," he said. " Why do you not proceed to your task?" This was too much for ..ven this bloodthirsty t deputation; they could not kill the man whose cigars they were smoking, and who invited them to carry out their tasK. Muttering come excuse for having interrupted his studies, they shuffled out of the room and troubled him no more. Teachers, of dancing from all pa'rto of the country met at. Leeds on the - 24th July for tho annual conference of " The Imperial Society of Dance Teachere," which is to discuss Ciie latest methods of thb profession. At the close of the conference a technical school is to be held for the teachers with the object of bringing into vogue " a more refined style than that now existing," In the course of his presidential address Mr. R M.Crompton referred to the degradation which he considered the art had suffered owing to slovenly teaching. Ho strongly ! condemned what he described/ as the vulgarity which had. crept into ball-ruomo. and earnestly begged the teachers to exert their influence against this by putting before the pupils, an ideal of graco and refinement. 'Mr. Crompton also expressed the opinion that dancing was an essential part of the education problem, and that it ought to form a very important feature in the curriculum of every public school. A quartet of a century ago (an exchange writes) sportsmen were talking and writing about tho snipe puzzle — whence they camp and where they went. Now every detail of th«j lone oversea flight to Japan and Eastern Siberia in well known, and we know that th© bird which for the sake of distinction has been called tho Australian, snipe does not oelong to us at all, but is only a our* mer visitor. A few years hence those who are now so earnestly discussing the waya and wanderings of trout will, no doubt, think it strange that there should havo been any diversity of opinion. Every habit and movement of trout, whether rainbow, brown, Loch Tjwen, or the mysterious and uncertain salmon trout, will be thoroughly understood, though for the present there seem to be many points upon which th© experts earnestly and entirely disagree. Controversy about th© rainbow trout is especially keen, chough the balance of opinion is etJongly in favour of tho theory that he disappears mysteriously ' from many rivers wnich wer© 'at one time well stocked. Science and observation have yet to aetfiraino wlia* becomes- of th© rainbow trout when, _ following what seems to be his natural instinct, ho makes his way to tho sea. Tho prodigal extravagance and illjudged business speculations of the London County Council have raised tho local rates to such a point that oldostablished firms havo been compelled to migrate and leave a heavier burden still on those who remain. Tho movement has becomo so extensive that tho Groat Eastern Railway Company is collecting information from various districts to help those London manufacturing firms who dosiro to shift their establishments to the country, to avoid financial disaster. Tho information thus obtained is at tho sorvico of tho puulic. The Lea Valley is a much favoured sito for the banished industries, but investigations are proceeding in many countries. "The field," said a representative of tho company, "includes Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Huntingdon, Hertfordshire, and parts of Cambridge. The matters on which our agent is enquiring comprise the accessibility of tho Bite by rail or water, whether tho surrounding ground is flat enough for cartage, whether coal can be easily procured, whethor water for use in the manufactory is available, whether railway sidings aro practicable and tho cost of transmission of Roods to and fro from centres." By relieving congested London and conducting industries under more wholesome conditions, groat benefit may ultimately ensue to tho kingdom, but thin will not vemovo the financial diffiqulMei Plfifltfid b£ thf $&pnsU« -