NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22315, 13 January 1936, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

FLAT LIFE CRITICISED Sir Herbert Humphries, a former city engineer of Birmingham, gave an address on housing at a London congress. He emphasised tho advantages of the small house compared with the flat. Ho said that he had inspected great numbers of flats all over tho Continent, and had found no instance in which the people were satisfied with them. People were not really happy in flats, where they could not live an individual life. Flats were inconvenient for exercise, and in them people were too much crowded together. Many Continental authorities who had put up flats were now wishing they could pull them down again. Tho majority of working-class peoplo could never show the same prido in a flat dwelling as in a house of their own. He "was not concerned about the fineness of tho town if it did not lead to tho happiness of the people. MANUFACTURING CRIMINALS When Mr. Justice Humphreys was told at Sussex Assizes that a prisoner had been sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment with hard labour at the age of 15 he said, "And so a criminal was manufactured." In sentencing a prisoner, who is 33 years of age, the Judge said: —" Tho outstanding and painful fact in your caso is that" when you were a boy of 15 and committed an offence, in all human possibility led on by others older than yourself, you were sent away to an ordinary prison full of really bad characters for what was called imprisonment with hard labour. In 1917 that meant hard labour, but it does not now. With tho greater knowledge that we have and tho experience nobody would be surprised that by that sentenco you were made into a. criminal, because that is the effect, it is now realised, of sending a boy to an ordinary prison where he associates with criminals. I am paying no attention to those convictions which you had and sentences you served for some years after that becauso I think it must have been very very hard for 3*ou to avoid committing offences." AIR-BORNE INFECTION The existence of clouds of tiny organisms at great heights from tho earth and their important relation to air-borno infection, such as pulmonary disease, were described by Professor R. C. McLean, professor of botany at University College, Cardiff, when ho delivered the Chadwick Lecture at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Aeroplane surveys had made it clear, he said, that microorganisms occurred in sporadic clouds which might be found at any height that liad so far been investigated up to 20,000 ft. Condensation of moisture took placo very readily on such small objects, and it was significant that tho largest catches had been reported from just below tho base of clouds, where saturation conditions obtained. "It is quite possible for micro-organisms to live, surrounded by condensation droplets, even at great heights," said Professor McLean. "All tho elements necessary for nutrition may bo obtained in the air in sufficient quantities. Formaldehyde and radio active material are also present, and may play a part in stimulating growth." Until they knew how such apparently delicate organisms could survive in the atmosphere, they were not likely to have a full understanding of the conditions of air-borne infection. WATER DIVINING A Times correspondent states that the first piece of scientific work in England on water divining was carried out by Mr. G. A. M. Lintott in the Physiological Department at Guy's Hospital and in Sussex during the last few months of the late Professor M. S. Pembrey's tenure of the chair of physiology at Guy's. Though the nature of tho radiation from the spring to tho individual is as obscure as ever, ho says, at least we have knowledge of certain facts as the result of this work. The movement of the twig or other apparatus is due to an increased tone of the muscles of the forearm, and possibly all the muscles in tho body take part: this has been proved as far as one of the jaw muscles (the masseter muscle) is concerned, and it may also bo true elsewhere, as is instanced by the shuffling gait adopted by experienced dowsers by which they voluntarily increase the tone in their lower limbs to tune themselves in, as it were, for the reception of the stimulus. When the subject is fatigued or off colour his power of increasing tho tone of his muscles is diminished and the results are not so good. The fact that water divining is impossible on a smooth glass surface is not due to resistance to any hypothetical electric disturbance, but merely because it is so slippery that it is impossible to hold tho body rigid. OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE In proposing the toast of "Oxford and the Oxford Society," at a dinner of the York branch of the Oxford Society, Dr. Norwood, alluding to tho return of Mr. A. P. Herbert to Parliament for the University, said he had been asked many times, why it happened. It was a good sign, showing a certain friskiness on the part of the society and the spirit of eternal youth. Dr. Norwood said he did not share tho foreboding that Oxford and Cambridge had seen their best days and would have to take a back seat in tho beauty chorus of modern universities. He wished nothing but good to modern universities and trusted they would go on from strength to strength, but he believed the older universities would always remain a sort of corps d'elito. One reason why they would not lose tho position they had was because they had tho tradition of centuries which would always tell with Englishmen. Oxford must not rely on its traditions. There were three things which ought to be done and must bo done. The first was in every way to make it less expensive, must open it out to every class in the nation. The second thing was to make Oxford efficient; they must make it above all a place where knowledge was sought for knowledge's sake, truth for truth's sake. That was a most valuable contribution which Oxford could make to the present generation. Thirdly, and above all, they must keep it free so that they could say what they thought and honestly believed, and every one could follow the argument right through.