NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11551, 15 January 1901, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Commenting on the beer-poisoning outbreak, the Lancet indicates that it is not satisfied that all trouble is passed, and hints that mischief may yet arise in fresh places. We venture to suggest, it says, that a special Government order should be issued instructing all county authorities to institute an analytical inquiry in their districts.'} This investigation could be conducted legally under the provisions of the' Pood and.Drugs. Act, but it is'a mistake to suppose that proceedings can be taken on finding arsenic in beer, at any rate in the first instance, for there is a clause in the Act which provides that guilty knowledge of the presence of an injurious ingredient in food 4 or drugs is essential to the proof of offence. Once warned, however, the beer seller may be severely punished if he attempts to sell beer which he is informed is contaminated. This serious occurrence affords a fresh and startling argument for the interdiction of substitutes unless very definite steps are taken to secure the absolute purity of such substitutes. ... The introduction of food substitutes on all sides requires a very complete and searching inquiry, and, in our opinion, the substitute-is so often a means to fraud that some very special legislation should be directed to this question. However expedient a substitute may be, the public have a right to be protected from the deceit of being' tendered a substitute in the place of tile genuine article.

A curious little piece of racial autobiography (hitherto unpublished) by the late Professor Huxley is given by Mr. Havelock Ellis in Nature. It is contained in a private letter written to that 'gentleman by the great biologist a few years ago, and reads:"My father was a Warwickshire man; my mother came of Wiltshire people. Except for being somewhat taller than the average of the type, she was a typical example of the 'Iberian' variety—dark, thin, rapid in all her ways, and with the most piercing black- eyes I have ever seen in anybody's head. Mentally and physically (except in the matter of the beautiful eyes) I am a piece of my mother, and except for her stature,which used to be sft lOin, I should do very well for a 'black supposed to be the worst variety of that type. My father ' was fresh-coloured and gray-eyed, though dark-haired ; good-humoured, though of a quick temper, a kindly man, rather too easy-going for this wicked world.' There is a vein of him in me, but the constituents have never mixed properly. ... I know of Huxleys in Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Wales, and I incline to think that the Huxleys of Huxley (Cheshire) are responsible for most of us, and that, upon the whole, we are /mainly Iberian mongrels, with a good dash of Norman and a little Saxon."

Under their military rule the Americans, after careful preparation, made an enumeration of the inhabitants of Cuba on October 16, 1899, the complete results of which have been published, with commendable promptness, only a- year later. It is found that the total population is 1,572,000, really a small one considering the size, fertility of the island, and its peculiar relation to large neighbouring countries. The returns are very elaborate, as they enter into minute particulars of the past development from the earliest stages of its history and afford a complete record of statistical conditions during the military occupation of the past two years. An analysis is attempted of the effects of the last insurrection against Spain and the policy of reconcentration. The conclusion that together this cost about 300,000 lives is reached by taking the,dccrease in the birth-rate for the years between 1895 and 1899 and the increase in the death-rate. The former works out at 60,000, while the deaths in those districts in which vital statistics have been kept are estimated at 200,000; beyond the I normal. A statement recently made by' General Wood, the American commander in Cuba, forms an interesting addition to the census returns. He says that since the beginning of this year 60,000 immigrants have gone to Cuba as permanent citizens or

settlers. This is*ascribed to th& fart thai i the taxes in Spain are now very exacting and also to'the desire of its people to go to gome country where their own language is spoken.■ If this process continues tho changed pro- : 4 portion between whites and blacks is likely • to have far-reaching effects, both in politics and in social life. As the Spanish Sieinentf among the population incline to favour an- . \ nexation to the United States rather than in. C dependence, this new inllux from the Pen., insula will probably do more to promote union with America than a like iromigra-' • lion from the United States itself. Thug far there is not the strong set of ii.iipigratien from English-speaking countries that was anticipated as the result of the defeat of Spain. t ' * . . - : ; ■ Sir Heir.y Irving, who was recehtly m-' tertained by the Sheffield Press Club, delivered an interesting speech 011 the drama,;; in the course of which be said:—l am rescued from inflections on the lapse of time ■ by the gratifying proofs of your unabated interest in the work I am doing, after many , years of strenuous labour. No actor, vi itfti« so long an experience of the cares of "a.' theatre, ever had less reason to complain of , public indifference. I see that a very suecessful dramatist has been making soma •' amusing remarks on what he calls the " com- - : mercial drama," contending that art does not pay. If he had said that art doe# f : not always pay he would have stated an' elementary truth, but no more elementary and no more truthful than the proposition ■-j that the " commercial drama" does not el-.' ways pay. The dramatic tide has its ebb and flow like other tides, and you > cannot 4be sure that a particular policy, although f it may enjoy an enormous success for & - considerable period, will always be an advancing and never a receding wave. No- " body has : found the philosopher's stona. No theatrical manager has discovered a. type of play that he can go or repeating ■> with a positive certainty that it will always please the public. But to say that this is a. total discouragement of artistie JA conditions on the stage is to draw a Very . ' hasty conclusion from the mutability pf humpji affairs. If there were a decline »<f vh pcpular interest in the drama itself the public were to desert the theatre and. discover some strange and mystical recreation in musical tea meetings, under the patroa«i age of the clergy of all denominations, that (k might bo a rather serious omen. But, short of that contingency, I don't think ' v , the drama—even the artistic drama— $ very much to fear. Certainly, there it rti warrant for any playwright to label hi# 5 ' wares with this exclusive advertisement, v* "Buy thisthis is' the only thing that : pays." You may depend upon it that in the drama, as in literature, men, whose rslent has its own laws, will continue to produce, not only what pays within a cm tain 1"; limit of experience, but what ought to pay by virtue of its original merits. They will % have their share of fortune, and whatever -; betide them, they will not lock the esteem of their generation. If I were to attempt to describe Sheffield, I might call it, without exaggeration— any rate, without displeas- i ing exaggeration—the- very core of cup great commercial system; but 1 have not found that a taste for dramatic art is incom- - patible in Sheffield with success in cutlery. I shall take away with me the liveliest acfl ? the most grateful appreciation of yoyr onwavering interest in the work in which Miss £ Terry and I have spent our lives.