NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 13028, 20 November 1905, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

HOUSING THE WORKER,

Within the past few years the question of housing the working classes in England has forced itself upon the attention of many municipalities, large land owners, and great employers of labour. The municipalities in England are at present working along one of two lines. The one is the clearing of insanitary areas and rehousing the people in large tenements, and the other is the building of working-class cottages on the outskirts of the town or beyond the limits of the town. Under the so-called Housing. of the Working-classes Act of 1890 local authorities have the power to condemn and clear large slum areas and rehouse the persons so displaced. In London the work must be done to the satisfaction of the Home Secretary, but in all urban districts to the satisfaction of some local government board. This Act further permits money to be borrowed, with the consent of local boards, the period of repayment not to exceed 60 years. With this money, land may be acquired convpulsorily and cottages or houses built to house the artisans. In England over 100 towns or district councils have- adopted part of the Housing of the /Working-classes Act. Some of the largest cities in Scotland have carried out extensive housing schemes. Similar experiments have been made in Ireland, but not under the. above-named Act. Eleven towns in England have built cottage flats, the two most important being Plymouth and East Ham. In these 11 experiments there are 141 two-roomed, 232 three-roomed, and 148 four-roomed dwellings. Cottage flats are two-storeyed, selfcontained dwellings, with-one upper flat and one lower flat, somewhat like twostorey tenement houses, but they have separate access to the street, and are each occupied by only one family. Some have balcony access, but others have separate front doors and back stairs; with separate yards or gardens. As far as cottage class of dwellings is oncemed, 31 local authorities, including two rural councils, have built cottages for the •' working classes. There are altogether 1643 dwellings with 7599 rooms. The London County Council is engaged at present in building a, whole township of these cottages at Tottenham, outside London. . These are provided in the shape of two-storey, self-contained dwelling on separate sites, occupied by only one family, and provided as a rule with a separate yard or garden. ARE THERE UNICORNS IN AFRICA? Ever since Stanley's famous expedition through the great Congo forest region in search of Emm Pasha, there have been rumours of the existence in the heart of tropical Central Africa of a, huge pig-like animal, very strong and ferocious, and which did not hesitate to pursue and attack human beings, says a T.A.T. (Tales and Talk) contributor. The natives asserted that it was as big as a small buffalo, with bayonet-shaped tusks of immense strength and extreme sharpness, and they evinced the greatest respect for its fighting powers. It would, they said, engage in combat even with a full-grown bull elephant, and usually got the better of the encounter, charging under its gigantic opponent's belly and disembowelling it. Other similar tales, too, were told of the mysterious creature to later explorers, and many amongst them searched for it, but always in vain ; so that at last the giant pig came to bo regarded, like the unicorn or the sea serpent, as altogether mythical. And now, at last, comes the news that the directors of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington have actually received both a skin and a skeleton of the animal, the donor being a certain Lieutenant Meinertzhagen, of the East African Rifles. The lieutenant killed the brute in. the wilds of Western Uganda, after a desperate encounter, in which he cams near to losing his life. It proved, as the natives had all along asserted, to be about the size of a small buffalo, with triangular tusks, and a thick, bristly hide. This remarkable find, coming as it does- almost on top of Sir Harry Johnston's discovery of that other strange' animal, the okapi, opens up some startling possibilities. Native rumour has always insistecf, for instance, upon the existence, in certain of the remote and inaccessible high lands of the interior, of a horse-like animal having a single straight tusk projecting from its forehead; in short, a unicorn. Who shall say that they are lying or are mistaken? We have even yet much to learn about the Dark Continent, vast areas of which, contrary to popular impression, remain unexplored. Seventeen years ago scientific men would have laughed to scorn the 'dea, of the existence there of a race of pygmies described by Herodotus. Yet we have lived to see specimens exhibited on the stage of a London music hall.