CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CV, Issue 12539, 28 June 1901, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

The last volume of statiscances. tics issued bj the Government Printer contains a precise analysis of the deaths from cancer that have occurred in the colony during the ten | from, 1891 to 1809,, The suffering it

records among persons of all ages, from three months to eighty years, is terrible enough, but there is some consolation to bo found in the fact that notwithstanding thecontinued increase in the population, there is a distinct decline in the number of deaths, > This is a silver lining to the dark cloud which very few people have suspected, indeed, the general idea is that-the ravages : of the fell disease are becoming more and more formidable every year. Happily, the statistics tell a different story. The fatal cases seem to have reached High-water mark in 1898, when they numbered 471 for the whole of the colony. In 1899 the total i fell to 468, and in 1900 to 430. A decline of 41 deaths in two years, with an increas# .of about 40,000 in the population, isa «• suit which encourage® the hope that medical science is at last making some progress against the destroyer. Men, as every* one knows; are more liable to the disease than women, and the following table of deaths, remembering that the males in the colony at the end of last year numbered: 427,229, and the females 383,307, will give some idea of the extent to which each •sex has been affected during the past five

Among the total population last year there wa* one death for every 1885 persons, among the males one for every .1736, and! among the females one for every 2094. The deaths, however, were not confined to adults. One female under twelve months of age is numbered among the victims, one 4 male and one female between one .year and five, and five males and one female between, five and twenty. The total deaths between forty and forty-five were 16, between forty- . five and fifty 40, between fifty and fiftyfive 35, between fifty-five and sixty 75, between ■ sixty and sixty-five 78, between ■ sixty-five and seventy 59, between seventy and seventy-five 61, between seventy-five and eighty , 31, and over eighty 20. The fact that 43 men died from canter in the mouth, tongue or throat, and only, four women, suggests to the lay mind unpleasant reflections on the abuses of tobacco. ’

PEKIN.

If it is really true thajj the Germans have secures!

. a contract for lighting Pekin with electricity, and that an attempt is to he made to render the cityhabitable for foreigners, the grand Allied expedition cannot, softer all,' be -written! down an absolute failure. It would be like the Chinese to cut up the wires and steal the lamps, because, apart from thear natural kleptomania, they will resist by any means dn their power the introductioai of a new thing. Pekin is absolutely unlit at night, 'and dn th© oldi days foreignexc who' went but of doors after dark used to be lighted on their way, by torch-hearers.; Eighteen months'ago, Miss Scidmore spoke , of Sir Robert ' Hart’s gate lamp os the one attempt ever made dn Pekin to light the streets.. Sir Robert set up a gas-plant of his own, and the “one great gas-burner in a conventional city street lamp ; has flared as a beacon of progress from hid* compound wall beside the dark Koulan." hu-tumg Alley for a quarter of a century. I ’?'■ A blessing to wayfarers, Mass ScL-dmor® calls • it, “but an object-lesson utterly, wasted on the Pekin municipality.” Pekin has been described scores of times during the past year, and it is their own fault if colonials know no more about it than tiheji do about St Petersburg or Moscow. Even the- far-famed Legation Street is only a “ straggling, unpaved slum of a thoroughfare, along which one occasionally sees a‘ European picking his way between the ruts and puddles with the donkeys and camels.” “This broad gutter,” is Miss' Scddmore’s description. The city has now no water-supply, though the Mongol andi Ming dynasties constructed and maintained a splendid system, and householders depend either on rain-water tanks or on wells, the water in 1 ., which, impregnated with all the salts.of the Ohi-li plain, is hard and harsh. Summer brings tropical heat and -deluges, and in winter there is a little enow, so that I thei streets axe either ankle-deep in dust or knee-deep in noisome mud. There ia not even surface drainage, and; th® undrained stagnant sewage would /have killed off all' the Europeans years ago had it not been for the marvellous climate, and! dry, clear adr of the plain. There is, indeed, a fine field for mij*icipal enterprise in Pekin.

THE GUM STREAM ' MYTH.

The unfortunate Gulf Stream, has come in for a great deal of illusago and abuse of late. W© used to

be told that the British Isles and Western Europe owed the comparative mildness of their climate to the beneficent influence of tins great warm ocean current, and ingenious theories have been’invented which accounted for the fogs of Great Britain by saying that the country was right over the spout of a steaming tea-kettle. Now we are told that the bulk of the Gulf Stream really does not come near Great Britain, and that if it did the effect On the climate of the islands would never be noticed 1 . Mr H. M. Watts, in the “ Monthly Weather Review,” speaks of the deference paid to the exploded Gulf Stream theory of climate as a remarkable instance of foolish “ adherence to the abandoned camp of earlier, cruder science.” “Though the theory still persists,” says Mr Watts, " that the Gulf Stream alone, by its own inherent warmth, causes the mild climate of North-Western Europe, and though if is still referred to’ in a familiar, off-hand manner by. school teachers in teaching physical geography, and by writers who ought to know better, yet most people seem unfamiliar with tho broader restatements of the problem now made by meteorologists.” By itself alone, we are told, the Gulf Stream has os much effect on the climate of North-Western; Europe as the fly in the fable aid in carry- - ing the stage-coach up the hill. The mild climate of North-Western Europe is due, not to the Gulf Stream, but to tho prevailing eastward and north-eastward drift of the circumpolar atmospheric circulation. The entire surface of the Atlantic Ocean north of the region of the trad® winds, or rather north and west of the centre of the great North Atlantic anticyclone, is drifted, to the north-east by the prevailing aerial drift, which drift, and not the ocean currents, carries the beneficent dnflpences of the ocean over the European islands and the shores to the east and north-east. The Gulf Stream has* been given the credit that belongs to the whole mass of the Atlantic. The same fallacy prevails as to the power effirth?' {Japan current to affect tho coastal climate of - North-Western North America. Tho entire diversion of the Gulf Stream at the Straits of Florida, according to Mr Watte, might be made without anyone in Great Britain being one whit the wiser, and meteorologists are beginning to be tired of protesting against the continued appearance of the old myth in school

years:— ■ X Year. Males. E'en: ales. 1896 . 205 „• 184 1897 . 210 , . 185 1838 263 . 208 1899 . 271 , 197 1900 216 . 184