CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15923, 8 May 1912, Page 8

CURRENT TOPICS.

BTtTDIES W EVOLTfTIOH.

An anonymous donor recently gave a sum of £20,000 to Cambridge University as an endow-

mont for a Chair of Genetics and also arranged to provide and equip an experimental station. The- purpose of this station, which will be controlled by the Professor of Genetics, will be to study the problems of evolution and heredity, and scientific men believe that B ome verv important results will be secured. Professor R. 0. Punnott, who probably will occupy the Chair, has carried out many remarkable experiments already with rabbits and poultry. He has secured distinctive colours in the case of the rabbits and has influenced the siae and egg-laying qualities of the poultry by means of selective crossing according to well-ordered plans The field for work of this kind is'enormous and the results that are secured are of advantage,- of course, to tho whole world. It is interesting to notice in this connection that a breeder of stock in England is claiming j to have gone far towards solving the j problem of sex determination. He says that he can prophesy with a considerable amount of certainty the sex of tho off-spring of animals that ho breeds. His secret appears to lie in a close and particular study of the more immediate, ancestors of the parents. | He discovers what is called a male or f male "preponderance" in the ances- . and bases his expectations on. & comparison of the degree of prepondert ,-n the father and in tho mother. rmoy I" . .- " .1 The breeder claims now to have made his methods so nearly exact in practice tbatthoy should be adopted by all

stock breeders, while the Government should provide “ breeding studs ” e»; farms wljere breeders can have their stock replenished and renewed " by the correction of any undesirable tendencies and the adjustment of the proportion* between the sexes.” The scheme is not as generally interesting as that of the German expert who says that the sex of babies is a result of pre-natal conditions that can be controlled by dieting the mother, but it suggests many possibilities of advantage to tho breeder and the farmer. The Professor of Genetics will have an enormous field for investigation before him and he may he expected confidently to secure some remarkable results.

WEATHER OFFICE HUMOUR.

Tho Commonwealth Weather Bureau is a very

big institution. Five tnousand unpaid observers in Australia supply masses of information concerning rainfall and temperature to the Bureau, the only regions which are not under supervision being the central districts of Western Australia and the mountainous south-western part of Tasmania. Tho observers naturally add something to the gaiety as well as to the knowledge of the weather experts in Melbourne, and the Bureau cherishes some very good stories among its unofficial archives. It is related that a record received one summer day from an inland station gave a shade temperature of 130 degrees. The wary officials put it aside with a view to awaiting further information, and next day the station seilt word that tho thermometer was broken. Inquiries showed that a local humorist had endeavoured to establish a heat record for the district by placing a match under tho instrument. A rain gaug? was placed at a college in New South Wales, and when rain begaij. to fa]} the' pupils, added a liberal supply c$ water from a neighbouring tap to N*» ture’s contribution. They took great interest in tho master’s operations as he solemnly measured the rainfall. An officer of the Bureau who visited the college subsequently saw the gauge resting at tho top ‘of a high .pole. A squatter in the dry country took great pride in a gauge that was confided to his .care,- and on the few occasions when it rained he measured the drops with the utmost precision. 1 One night there was a heavy shower, and the squatter rose early to measure the rainfall, tafo ing a guest with him to see the gauge, To his great dismay he found the instrument covered by a sack. A new gardener, who had recently left the sea, had polished the brass-work and then sought to protect it from the rain. At Dubbo, a bee-keeping district in New South Wafes, a tank was erected for the purpose of recording evaporation. Phenomenal, records were obtained, and as there was no leak in the tank the officials were mystified. At last they discovered that Dubbo is a thirsty place, and the bees for mile? round were levying upon tho tank for the liquid nourishment necessary to sustain them in their busy lives.

TOO JIAKT CRIMINALS.

The exploits of the “ motor bandits ” in Paris during, the past

few months have drawn attention to the remarkable prevalence of crime in that city. It is said that Paris suffers more from the depredations of criminals than any other European capital does, ’ the proportion of evil-doers in the population of the gay city being phenomenally large. The records kept by tho police show that | there are fifteen thousand criminals at I large among a population, of-four mil- . lions, and the police are emphatic in asserting that every one of these fifteen thousand men and women should be' serving sentences in the French penal settlements. The opinion of M. Lepine, the head of the Parisian police, was sought after one of the motor outrages a few weeks ago, and he said simply, “ There are too many of them. . The law does not give us the means to, keep them under.” M. Lepine spoke just after receiving news of the murder of a oonstable by the bandits. “ The number of criminals in Paris,” he. said, "grows every day. Respect for the liberty of the individual makes it impossible for the police to prevent crime. It is not easy to catch criminals redhanded, hut that sometimes happens. We hunt them down,' and find them after many days. And then, well, then the least thing the law should do for us and for society is to punish the men we have caught, and punish them severely. But the law does not do so-” The officer’s complaint is supported vigorously by a correspondent of the “ Daily Express,” who says that for the last twenty years M. Lepine has been asking in vain for repressive laws to assist him in his struggle against hooligans and criminals. The correspondent declares that criminality in France is becoming a “game.” Tho criminal believes that money may be obtained easily by dishonesty, and he also enjoys the "excitement of the game.” All the blame for this state of affairs, according to the correspondent, rests with the mild legislation that is passed, the French'police system being one of tho finest in the world. If the correspondent is right, humanitarians in Franco have overlooked the need of reformatory treatment of criminals and haw sought only to be kind to them.