CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10218, 12 December 1893, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

No traveller (a London contemporary says) is more popular in Denmark than the Czar, although hia luggage consists or no fewer than three hundred large trunks (exactly twice the number of those used by the Princess of Wales and her daughters), which fill fourteen railway vane. One of these cases ia entirely devoted to the Imperial presents, which are distributed with extraordinary liberality. A largesse of 10,000 francs is distributed among the Fredensborg servants; Danish functionaries of all grades are made happy by the various crosses and ribbons of Stanislas and St Anne; diamond rings reward the assiduity of the police, while gold watches and chains of considerable value are bestowed on telegraphists and stationmasters. The Emperor always causes a large sum of money to be given to the poor of Predensborg.

Amongst English-speaking people an unlucky number, except at a dinner party, troubles very few. It is not so in Italy, and a recent concession to popular demand shows how singularly superstitious the people are. The unlucky number, of course, ia 13. If it were considered unlucky at the roulette table or the lottery bank, that would be intelligible enough. People who gamble are proverbially superstitious. But, aa a fact, 13 ia just as much covered aa any other square on the table, or any other event in the lottery. It is at the theatres that the superstition asserts itself, and it is the managers of theatres who recognise it. At the Regio at Turin it was announced a few weeks ago that the " number 13 ” should in futurebesuppreEsad. Stalls and seats of that figure would thenceforth he described as “ 12a.” The manager of the Goldoni at Leghorn is now going to follow the innovation of his brother at Turin. Other theatres will adopt the popular fad, and 13 will be to the Italians what the Kalends were to the Greeks.

The Havanete bacteriologists. Doctors Acosta and Gtaude-Rosai, conceived the idea, sorely an original one, of studying the microbes of bank notes. They have published the result of their researches on the notes of the Spanish Bank of Havana. They have proved, in the first place, that the weight of these notes increases in the course of their circulation by reason of the addition of foreign matter. At the end of a certain time the bacteriological analysis demonstrated a considerable increase in the number of microbes; ia two cases, this number rose- to more than 19,000. The physicians discovered specially the presence of a septic bacillus, which rapidly kills animals inoculated with it; this, to speak properly, is the specific microbe of the bank note, and Talamon thinks that the name, bacillus septicus aureus, could be justly given to it. Messrs Acosta and Graade-Rosei have, besides, recognised distinctly in the bank notes examined by them eight pathogenic species, among which were the bacillus of tuberculosis, that of diphtheria and the streptococcus of erysipelas.

The Melbourne Age of a recent date has the following : —ln his anxiety to enable applicants for allotments of land under the Homestead Association, as well as under the Village Settlement provisions of the Lands Settlement Act, to get on the land without'delay, the Minister of Lands, Mr M’lntyro, has unwittingly provoked much frictien. No surveys having been made or boundaries fixed, it has happened that several applicants have "squatted” on the same piece of land. Parties of men forming, homestead associations pitched their tents on or somewhere near the spots roughly 1 indicated by the department as open for them to peg cue. Some of them commenced work at once, cutting timber for fences, ringing trees and building log huts to live in. Directly the Enrvcyors went on the ground and started to define the allotments squabbles arose between the contending applicants, and in some instances violent scenes took place, particularly where the land was exceptionally good in patches or when the site was in other respects advantageous. In these circumstances the task of the surveyors was rendered very difficult. To prevent similar disputes in future, Mr Thomas, to whom has been entrusted the task of administering the homestead association /and village allotment sections, of the new law, has suggested to the Acting Minister of Lands, Mr M’Coll, that all lands before being thrown open for selection be surveyed into allotments or marked off on a map, so that persons applying for land may bo shown the particular blocks allotted to them. It is understood that the suggestion will be adopted.