CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXX, Issue 14975, 22 April 1909, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS.

The Stirling divorce case, in which. Lord Ranfurly’s son, Viscount Northland, figured as a co-respondent, was decided in favour of Mr Stirling and Mrs Atherton, and against Mrs Stirling and Viscount Northland. The case took up eighteen days of the full time and energy of the Scottish High Court, an expenditure of time which Lord Guthrie, the Judge, characterised as preposterous. Lord Guthrie’s judgment was a scathing commentary on the lives of the parties to the suit—“ selfish, idle lives, containing nothing that was romantic, not much that was even mock heroic, and little that was legitimately interesting.” The Judge added that whatever might be said about Mr Stirling or Lord Northland, it was necessary to remember, in considering the conduct of Mrs Stirling and Mrs Atherton, that their mental endowments could not be ranked high, nor their common sense, good taste or right feeling. Mrs Stirling, young and in good health, breakfasted in bed at eleven o’clock or at mid-day when resident in the country in summer, her husband going regularly to business in London by an early train. At Amberley Cottage, in the latter part of June and in July, the only useful occupation of Mr and Mrs Stirling, Mrs Atherton and Lord Northland seemed to have consisted on Sunday in manicuring each other's nails. In their attitude towards human life, said Lord Guthrie, there was not much to choose between the actors in this squalid drama. All four, Scottish laird, American ex-actress, peer’s son and divorcee, appeared to have looked upon life merely as an opportunity for having a good time, regardless of their duty to themselves, to each other, to their children, and to their relatives, and indifferent to tho good opinion of self-respecting people. They treated life as a comedy, but they had made a pitiful tragedy of it. Columns of the newspapers were daily devoted to reports of the case, and it is impossible to justify tho public attention given to it on any grounds. "Whatever useful purpose there was to bo served would have been adequately served by the publication of tho judgment.

SELFISH, IDLE LIVES.

The Governor of Uganda, Mr Ilesketh Bell', recently toured through the little-known eastern district of his province, and his report, * issued through the Colonial Office, shows that the possibilities of Uganda as a field for colonisation have still to be realised. Bukedi, meaning the land of the. naked people, presents, wo learn, a marked contrast to all the Mart of the Protectorate which lies west of the Mpologoma and of the Vic-

I,an p of the NAKED.

toria Nile. Tiresome “elephant grass” and. papyrus swamps are comparatively scarce. It is a vast plain of very tortile soil. Most of tho country is densely populated by primitive and warlike tribes who possess no political organisation, and who, for the most part, are absolutely naked and unashamed. “My trip through the Bagishu country filled me with amazement,” says Mr Bell. “We travelled for four days through enchanting scenery and traversed a country the like of which is, probably, not to he seen in any other part of Africa. Right through the smiling vaUeys and up to the very summits of the hills nothing but continuous fields of bananas, millet and winibi could be seen. It is no exaggeration to state that over 80 per cent of the land is under cultivation. Hie few green patches of grass that one could see hero and there had evidently only been spared so as to provide pasture for the herds of cattle and goats. The wholo of this ‘ garden ’ is cut up into small rectangular plots, each carefully defined by hedges of giant thistles. Dotted all about, in wondrous profusion, are the neat dome-shaped huts of tho Bagishu.” But this beautiful country is not without its disadvantages. The Bagishu are cannibals. They are not fierce head-hunters, but they hold that the burial of human bodies is a wanton waste of food. Mr Bell describes an amusing custom prevalent among the people of Northern Bukedi. Unmarried men are not trusted out at night. They must sleep in special huts, raised on posts. Access is gained by a ladder, which is carefuHy removed at nightfall, and to make assurance doubly sure, fresh ashes are nightly spread under tho “pigeon cotes.”

If the announcement made by a Boston inventor, Mr George S. Cove, should prove to be well founded, the industrial world will have no need to worry itself over a rapidly decreasing coal-sup-ply. Mr Cove claims to have perfected a device for generating and storing electric current direct from the sun’s rays, and in proof of his assertion ho has shown electrical experts from the Boston Institute of Technology a simple little, piece of apparatus fixed on the roof of his workshop. Inside the workshop incandescent electric lights twinklo merrily, night and day, and the electricians have satisfied themselves that the only source of current for these lamps is contained in the inventor’s mysterious “solar electric generator.” Mr Cove states that the cost of constructing such machines is but small, and that for £2O a generator can be made which will supply the necessary current for lighting an aver-age-sized house for ten years, without alteration or repairs. As the generator stores all current not required for immediate use, two days of bright sunshine in a week are all that are necessary for the generator to provide for the week’s lighting. Regarding the principle upon which tho generator acts, no details are available, and the whole story, as told by the San Francisco “ Weekly Examiner,” is vague and hazy in the extreme. It is stated, for instance, that Mr Cove “began hie experiments through' accident, when one day he lot some glass and other metals remain on the floor in tho direct rays of the sun, when a connection between tho metals and his storage battery resulted in storing them with electricity.” A writer who describes glass as a metal, and who imagines that connecting certain “metals” with a storage battery would be storing “them” with electricity, may not be a very reliable guide in a matter of this sort; but his blunders do not entirely disposes of tho possibility of Mr Cove having discovered a very valuable principle in thermo-electricity. It will he interesting to see what comment the technical journals of the United States will make upon this “ epoch-making invention.”

\ ELECTRICITY FROM THE sun’s rats.