NEAR AND FAR.

Evening Star, Issue 14225, 26 November 1909, Page 1

NEAR AND FAR.

Proceedings hare been instituted ill Christchurch with a view to getting an interpretation of clauses in the Dentists Ad, bearing on the admission of candidates. Ihe ease was an appeal against the refusal of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages to register the applicant (Frank C. Fryer) as a dentist. Applicant served his apprenticeship lor three years, and had passed his examinations required by the original Dentists Act. His apprenticeship commenced on January 7,1905, and concluded on the same date in 1903. The Dentists Act of 1904 was dated Bth November, 1904, and came into operation on the 10th January, 1905. Application for registration was made on the 28th June, 1909, and was refused on the ground apparently that the applicant was not entitled to lie admitted under section 11 of the Dentists Act of 1904. Mr Justice Denniston reserved his decision.

A meeting was held at Christchurch lost night, under the auspices of the Canterbury Trades and Labor Council, for the purpose of forming a clerk's union, and proved abortive. A- motion submitted in favor of the formation of the union failed to find a seconder. It was alleged by some of the clerks present that they hail been called together under false pretences, and that the majority of the clerks in Christchurch were satisfied with existing conditions. The Council say that middle-aged clerks were not represented, and that those desirous of forming a union did not attend the initial meeting, being afraid of spies, who would disclose their names to their employers. At a representative session of the District Synod of the Methodist Church at Wanganui, the following resolution was passed:—“ That this Synod emphatically protest against tho granting of wholesale licenses in the lung Country, and consider it to be a distinct breach of faith with the Maoris, and call upon tho Government to pass such legislation as will .prohibit the granting of any licenses in tho King Country, and demand that the promises made to the natives to protect them, from tho drink traffic must be held sacred for all time.”

At Berlin the jury convicted Auguste Zobel of murdering her rival, Fraulein Bartholdi, the operatic artist, and she was sentenced to death, as well as to the perpetual loss of all civil rights. While the Judge was considering the sentence, Zobel was seized with violent hysterics, and her piercing shrieks rang through the building. The Court waited for some time, and finally the prisoner had to be carried into the dock, where- she heard the sentence of death in a state of collapse. The evidence was of the most painful nature, a number of most pathetic letters from Zobel to her false lover being read.

A young lady, named Miss Lewis, living in the north of London, is reported to have found a cure at the famous grotto of Lourdes. She was .among the 250 English pilgrims who recently visited Lourdes under the leadership of Bishop Brindle. “ For years,” she said to a Press representative, “1 haye had excruciating pains in the head and nose, as well as swellings in the legs, and 1 went to Lourdes to see if 1 could really get cured. Alter my second bath in the water near tbe grotto I felt renewed in vigor, end.perfectly restored to health. I have been in. splendid health ever since, and have liad no return whatever of the pain in the head, while the swellings have completely disappeared.” ■

M. Galinot, a French Government official, has returned from the penal settlement in French Guiana with an extraordinary account of the conditions there. His official report, which will soon be published, stales that the convicts who go to the settlement are punished in exactly inverse ratio to their crimes. The murderers and the most dangerous convicts are sent to the Island of Salvation, where they lead lazy and healthy lives, but the men convicted of lesser offences work and die in a terrible climate on the coast. In the settlement of Sr. Jean De Maroni the mortality is from 40 to 50 per cent. The average life of a, convict is two rears.

The Rev. T. T. Norgatc, in a lecture before the English Photographic Society, remarked ; “ While on a tour in Central Italy I came across the Rubicon—the famous river crossed by Julius Caesar —and was dis. appointed to find that it has now become the merest trickle of a stream, in which it would be quite impossible for a. man to drown himself.’'

Mount Aspiring has for a. long time been considered one of the unclimbablc mountain. 1 - of New Zealand. There were quite a number of New Zealand mountains that came under that heading, but one by one they have yielded to persevering attacks of "Alpine climbers. Dr Teichclmann, of Hokitika, received a, wire last night stating that Claptain Head, an English mountaineer, accompanied by Alex. Graham (of the Waiho) and Jack Clark (late of the Geological Survey Department), had succeeded in reaching the summit of Mount Aspiring. The attack was made from the Otago side, from Pembroke as a base.