CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIX, Issue 11540, 29 March 1898, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE COMING OP THE SLAV.

It is a far cry from Lyttelton to St Petersburg, but the political sentiment of the Czar’s capital gives

vital significance to a statement which the Premier made at Lyttelton on Saturday. Mr Seddon spoke in glowing terms of the unity of British peoples and of the certainty that they would always for all practical purposes stand shoulder to shoulder in the world, and the perpetual policy of Russia shows that this is a necessity which all British people should cep steadily in mind in their own interest and in that of civilisation. It is upon' the Anglo-Saxon and -the Slav that the

future of the world is, in the main, to depend, and it is the duty of the AngloSaxon to see that his part in the great: drama is not a minor one. Our cablegrams show how Russia is playing her game in China, and an article recently contributed by the Eev Dr George Washburn to the Contemporary Review dwells on the inevitableness of Russian ascendency in Europe. Dr Washburn shows that the conflict between the Germans and the Magyars is rapidly bringing the Slavs together in Austria, while Russia has brought Bulgaria, Serviaand Montenegro into alliance, and is preparing the way for Slavic rule in Macedonia. There is no question about the coming of the Slav in south-eastern Europe. This era of peace, so-called, is working out changes more momentous than many a great war. It is clear now that the Slav, and nob the Greek, is to inherit the eastern empire. This does not necessarily imply the speedy extension of the Russian empire to the Adriatic; but when the time comes for Russia to take Constantinople, the southern Slavs must inevitably come under her rule, and the coming of the Slav will, in the end, mean the coming of Russia. What Russia may be or may do after she takes Constantinople, the Czar himself could not tell us, but, as Dr Washburn shows, the Slavic race is still in its youth, and as the race becomes more united, more enlightened and more self-conscious, it will be loss likely to yield to Western influences. This is already manifest in Russia. It is more Russian to-day than it was in the time of Alexander II„ and there is nothing in the more liberal acts of the present Czar which is inconsistent with a still more distinctively Slavic development. All this shows how necessary it is, and how wise it will be for colonists, on their part, to keep their sentiments and sympathies in tune with the strong inter-imperial note which the Premier struck in the speech which he made at Lyttelton on Saturday night. Many readers will re-

SOCIAL HOURS WITH CELEBRITIES.

member with delight the late Mrs W. P. Byrne’s “Gossip of the Century.”

A continuation of that book of sketches has lately been published, containing many interesting and amusing reminiscences of European celebrities. Mrs Byrne was a great traveller, and in Pesth she made the acquaintance of the distinguished Magyar scholar and patriot. Professor Eonay, Secretary to the National Academy, who, at the time of the collapse of the Hungarian rebellion of 1848-9, contrived to escape from his prison under romantic circumstances, and found a refuge in England. The famous Cobden heard him one day asking for work in a London shop, and struck with the poor fellow’s worn and wasted appearance, coupled with his gentlemanly bearing, which spoke a language not to be mistaken, he questioned and elicited from him the story of his degradation and flight. Cobden engaged the penniless scholar as art tutor for his son, and the little aid thus rendered enabled Eonay to start once more on an honourable if laborious career. Many and curious are the stories that appear in Mrs Byrne’s second volume, and striking were the vicissitudes of for : tune that fell to the lot of some of the characters. In one passage Mrs Byrne relates a meeting with a noble lady in curious circumstances. " When in Paris in the year 1857 with a friend,” she says, “we met a singular-looking group, consisting of a little elderly woman in a very tattered costume, accompanied by a girl and boy also in tatters; it was the Quartier de la Ohiffe, and these were of its inhabitants. 1 saw my friend scanning them attentively. * Thera, s 'said be, ‘is an illustration of the vicissitudes of fortune which occur in this country ; that is a family of the class peculiar to Prance, les pauvres hontcuv. That miserable rag-picker is no other than Madame de Martignac, and her husband was brother to the Minister of Charles X.’ ” In 1840, in Brussels, Mrs. Byrne met the Irish novelist, Charles Lever, then trying to make his way in the medical profession, a veritable medicin mahjre lui. Another of her friends was Charles Waterton, the travelled and naturalist who made his estate a home for every kind of wild beast and bird, building nests and burrows for them, and studying their lives at leisure under these novel conditions. The whole book is interesting and amusing, and is instructive, too, while it " helps waste a sullen day.”

THE use op forests.

It is a popular belief that forests attract rain, and that treeless regions suffer from frequent droughts,

which are ruinous to pasturage and agriculture. Scientific observations do not, however, altogether justify this belief. In the North Island of New Zealand, for instance, experience teaches that the destruction of the bush does not lead to droughts but to Hoods. This shows that trees serve a valuable purpose in connection with the rainfall.; not, however, in the matter of insuring its regularity and copiousness, but in absorbing and otherwise retaining a large proportion of it and preventing it from flowing straight into creehs and rivers, and so causing floods which destroy stock and do other damage which spells ruin to the settler. It is facts like these that show the real function of trees inregard to the rainfall, and which call for systematic forestry throughout the country, both where bush has been destroyed and where it may not exist. In a paper recently contributed by Professor Hasen to the American Forestry Association, the popular belief that forests cause rain is shown to be without foundation. To begin with, he shows, in effect, that the great natural forests of the world could not have come into existence in rainless regions. There is, he says, no way whereby we can see that such forests would have started unless favoured by rainfall, so that the presence of the forest rather indicates the earlier occurrence of practically the same rainfall as at present. “ Meteorologists are agreed,” says Professor Hasen, “ that there has been practically no change in the climate of the world since the earliest mention of such climates. Plants found in mummy cases in Egypt that were plucked thousands of years ago show the tame size as those now found in that land. The ‘ early and the latter rains 5 are experienced in Palestine to-day .just as they were four thousand years ago. Jordan * overflows all its banks ’ to-day, in February, precisely as it did in Joshua’s day. "When wo come down to recent times and to the records of rainfall measured in Now England for more than one hundred years, or, at least, before and sineo the forests were cut, wo find a constancy in the rainfall which shows its entire independence of man’s efforts. Hero it should bo noted that totally barren lands of any extent, in New England for example, are to bo found only in imagination. Even where the forest has been cut away mercilessly there springs up a growth of sprouts which.

covers the ground, and answers almost the same purpose in causing rainfall (if there is any effect of that kind) as the forest. Even where land is entirely cleared of a forest, we have at times the green pasture, and at others still heavier crops, which leave the ground anything hut a sandy waste.” ______