NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19217, 5 January 1926, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

SPEED IN FLYING. Discussing tho speed of aeroplanes the Scientific American says a mile a minute, or 60 miles an hour, is the commonly accepted speed of an express train between .stops; and as tho landscape—trees, houses and hedgerows—streams by you, you have a very definite sense of high speed. Multi>!y that by four, and yon would still le moving at something less than the speed achieved by the army airplane in the recent 1925 Pulitzer Cup competition. Nature helped to heighten tho, wo had almost said, majesty of the performance, when she spread out as a background for the racers, a lovely silver sunset sky upon which was woven a delicate necklace of cirrus clouds that may have been some 20,000 ft. above tho earth. It was only for a few seconds that the little plaue was within view. The distant drone of her motors rose to a crescendo like a rich { organ note, as tho plane swept hurtling aoross the skies, looking for all the world j liko a huge torpedo bomb that might have j been fired from a giani rifle. Before the I involuntary gasp of wonder had died away, tho little ship had become a mere speck in tho distance as she passed out of I view in the autumn haze. How many of tho spectators, as they left the field, realised that it was only 17 years ago that Wilbur Wright, father of aviation, astonished the world by flying 56 miles at a speed of 36.74 miles per hour? From 36.74 miles an hour to 249.7 miles per hour is a far cry. What of the future ?

NATURAL FOOD. Writing in the Fortnightly Review on " The Prevention of Disease," Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane attributes many of tha diseases by which civilised peoples aro afflicted to the abandonment of natural food. Ho suggests that civilised races aro apt to become the victims of their own civilisation, and that the great civilisations of Babylonia, Egypt, Greece and Rome may well have been ruined by wrong feeding. He adds: It may b« argued that there is no natural food for man, that all ouc food is more or less artificial. In my opinion the natural food for man is that food which has proved its suitability and excellence by the experience of countless ages. For countless ages men have lived on the fruits of the earth, which were consumed largely raw, for fuel and cooking apparatus were rare and expensive. ; Tho cheapening of coal, gas and ironware has made cooking universal, and the fear of the microbe has led to the abandonment of raw food in innumerable cases. Preserved food, chemically treated food, tinned food and overcooked sloppy food has taken the place of our time-hallowed diet. With the assistance of modern machinery we extract the outer skin and the germ from the wheat, leaving the dead white flour,, and we have the outer skin polished off onr rice, barley, etc. Providence has put the most valuable constituents of our food into the very portions which wo give to animals or throw away. The outer skin of the various kinds of grain contains the precious vitamins, those mysterious substances which are essential to health, and they contain in addition the wonderful mineral elements which help in building up onr teeth, bones, etc. We over-boil our vegetables and the most precious constituents are thrown away with the water, and wo destroy tho vitamins contained in the green vegetables by adding soda during the, cooking.

BRITAIN'S OLDEST CRUISER. It will no doubt surprise many people to know that the oldest light cruiser now remaining on the active list of the British Navy is not 15 years old. She is the Weymouth, which was laid down at Elswick in January, 1910, and completed in 1911. The Naval and Military Record says: By the standard under which age is now estimated the Weymouth is some years past the limit of her "effective life." But she keeps going in cheerful defiance of all formulae. The moral is rather an instructive one, particularly at a time when "scrapping" on an extensive scale still continues. As a fighting machine the old cruiser is, of course, outclassed by later types, more particularly in the important element of speed. But there is a great deal of valuable and indeed essential service which a cruiser can perform alike in peace and war apart from purely hostile tactics. With us, in an infinitely greater relative degree than with any other sea Power, numbers count. Yet we have cut down numbers so ruthlessly that the reserve wo now possess is scarcely worthy of the name. The reasons which have led to such a result may be clear enough, but this does not necessarily mean that they are right. . A dozen Weymouths during the war would have proved a priceless asset. It is rather to be hoped that the Admiralty will continue to actively employ this light cruiser until ' she gives unmistakable evidence of having gone her time. Such an experiment would probably bring about a reconsideration of the system under .which ships are now condemned as obsolete.

SMOKELESS FUEL. Lecturing on "The Romance of Goal," Mr. I. M. Heilbron, professor of organic chemistry in Liverpool University, said there are signs that a newindustry is coming into existence which may work wonders in regard to the coal problem. The new industry would produce smokeless fuel from coal for industrial and domestic. use by the low temperature carbonisation process. For the domestic hearth, he continued, low temperature carbonisation coke will be the idea] fuel. It is clean., to handle, light to carry, easier to light than coal, burns slowly with a pleasant flame and gives oft no smoke. Only small chimneys will be required, and there will be no need for the services of the chimney sweep. In experimental work on this low temperature carbonisation process the British chemists are leading the world. The great problem of the new process was the tar which it produced. It was quite different from - the ordinary coaltar, and up to the present the chemists did not quite know what they could do with it. By distillation a very fine motor spirit could be obtained, suitable for use in combustion engines, either alone or in [ combination with alcohol, benzol or petrol; but in order that the proposition should be made a paying one, some use would have to be found for the other products. Sooner or later adequate uses would be found for them, and thus the incalculable advantages of smokeless fuel would be experienced not only in jpreater economy in coal consumption, but dismissing the smoke fiend which befouled the atmosphere, shut out the sunlight, injured everybody's health and impoverished agriculture.