NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9774, 22 March 1895, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The death of Mrs. German Reed, which was announced by cable yesterday, follows very hard upon thab of Corney Grain, the highly-respected London entertainer. The two had been close friends for many years. The lady was one of the German Reed Company vrhen Corney Grain joined ib in 1870, and her son, Mr. Alfred German Reed, was Corney Grain's parbner up to the time of the latter'a death. In his last magazine article, written towards the close of last year, entitled "Entertainments and Entertainers," giving some of his recollections, Corney Grain thus refers to the deceased lady :—" Mrs. German Reed is still alive, and we all hope to wish her many happy returns on January 1, 1895, when she will be 76 years of age. Mrs. Reed retired in 1879, followed by the good wishes of all her old friends. The younger generation know her not, bub the old and middle-aged have only pleasant recollections of 'mamma ' as her friends were proudly privileged to call her. Ib was always delightful to me to get Mrs. Reed to talk of her early days. How, as a little girl, she sang duets with Miss Poole at Brighton to William IV. and Queen Adelaide; of the Macready days when she played Ariel in «The Tempest,' and of the Haymarkeb Theatre, where the performance was often so prolonged that she was sometimes encored in a song at midnight. Those were the days when the theatres were lighted with oil, and closed during the whole of Lent. Mrs. Reed started her entertainment at St. Martin's Hall in 1855, consequently ib will reach its 40th birthday in 1895." Here is Mrs. Reed's autobiography— very short one.

" One man in his time plays many parts" 'tis true, And Shakespere might have added " woman" too ; For I've played many, yes I have, indeed, My favourite one—Priscilla German Heed.

In view of the facb that the Sydney Board of Health is just nowconductingexperiments in the hospitals with anti-toxin for diphtheria, it is interesting to note that according to the Paris correspondent of the Lancet a survey of the statistics published in divers countries of the results of Behring and Roux's method in the treatment of diphtheria up to the last day of December, 1894, gives a total of 2700 cases, with 433 deaths, or a mortality of 16 per cent.

. One of the latesb proposals for the utilisation of electric power is in treefalling. Electricity will soon mako itself felt in the forests of Washington State, for ib is said that a large timber company in that district is about to make the experiment which has been successfully tried elsewhere. Attempts have been made heretofore to cub down the big giants of America's wonderful forests with saws operated by steam, bub portable engines were hard to move about easily, and a number of other difficulties were also met that made the scheme impracticable. With electricity, however, things will be different. A central plant for the generation of the fluid will be set up, and of course its power can be sent anywhere by a wire, and there are few: places where a wire cannob & be ran. : The saws will be provided with licrhb gearing and attachments, and will be so arranged that they will not only be able to cut r. down a tree, bub to < divide i it into logs after ib baa fallen. Most of the timber in Washington ia now felled by axemen,

and their work is little short of marvellous Some" of thshi are is Mpett that they ami cub down a tree and make it fall wherever they Wish, *hey will put a' peg In the ground, for instance, somewhere in the radius erf' the effete Ift Which the tree they are about to attack will be bound to fall and wftjKif anything they possess that they" ban make the tree* when it folia, drive * a the peg.

Mi\ Henf? frying has b6eh lecturing oft acting as all aW before ft large and di«fej n . guished audience at the floyal Institution in Ldbdohi and -made bub an exceedingly plausible claim bo hate acting classified in this future among bhe fine arts, truly the actor's work, he said, embraced all the arts. He must first hate the gift or faculty of acting— a power that was as much a mil a* that Of power to paint or to mould, and whose ordered or regulated expression was the function of art. His Sympathy tausb than realise to himself the image in the poetirftiftd, and by the exercise of his art he must use hi* natural powers to the beSt advantage. His movements were in common with the sculptor's work « his appearance and expression, heightened by costume and pictorial preparation, were in common with the work of the painter, arid wrought in a bertairt degree by the same means and to the same ends; his Speaking Was ill common With the efforts bf the musician---to arouse the intelligence by the vibrations arid modulations of organised sound. Acting might be etanescent, ib might work in the media of common nature, ib mighb be mimetic like the other arts, it mlghb ttOb create, any more than did the astronomer Or the naturalist, but it. could live, and could add to the sum ol human knowledge, in the eV6r-Varying study of man's nature by man, and its work Could like the Six out of the Seven Won. der* of the World, exist as a great memory

Theprofoiind regret and public sympathy which thb illness of Urd Robbery has evoked at Home will find an echo in the colonies. 16 is how generally believed that he will hare to resign. It is suggested that he should take a long sea voyage. Efforts are beibg made to bring the lamentable strike in the boot trade in England to a close. Several pfomihent public men have offered to arbitrate in the dispute. Reports from America, published in the London Times, state that trade in the United States is improving, »nd that confidence, which is the soul of commercial enterprise, is increasing. By an explosion of dynamite on board a vessel on the Rhine, lives were lost and great destruction of property took place. The reports Which continue to come to hand from Armenia give appalling accounts of wholesale Massacres by Turkish troops of unoffending Armenians. The bitter feeling existing between (the Press and the trmy in Spain is threatening to bring about a Ministerial crisis. The Indian Government is making preparation for the permanent occupation of Chitral. A num. ber of bodies have been recovered from the wreck of the Reina Regente.