FUN AND FANCY.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10092, 9 March 1909, Page 4

FUN AND FANCY.

WHERE TO PICK! UP DIAMONDS. A recent arrival at Gape Town from Luderitzbucht German South-west Africa) has supplied interesting information regarding the remarkable diamond finds in that territory. The newly fouud fields, writes the correspondent of the London Mail at Cape Town, are situated about seven miles from the coast, and claims have already been pegged out over a considerable area, the pegs in one claim being at high-water mark actually under water. The method of recovering the diamonds in the proclaimed area is simplicity itself. The Ovambo natives, wearing blue goggles to protect their eyes from the blazing sun, are drawn up in a long line, and on hands and knees pick their way slowly over the sand. As they go they fill a fine-meshed sieve with the sand, and this is afterward plunged into a sea water hath, the diamonds falling to the bottom by specific gravity. The diamonds are then picked out with an ordinary table knife and placed, in a pickle bottle. The average cost of recovery is about Is a carat, and the price obtained is 30s a. earat. DIVING FOR IRON. Iron is surely the strangest of all spoils to be gathered from the sea. Vet tho industry of retrieving, iron from the ocean's bed furnishes occupation for many divers along the coast of Cornwall and Devon. This south-west coast of England is notorious for the wrecks that occur' there, and the metal portions of the ships that go down in its waters furnish a- rich source' of profit to the salvage firms that engage in unfastening it from the wooden portions of the vessels and hauling it to the surface by means of ropes. The how of the Suevic, which was lately lost in these waters, is the latest mine of iron and copper to be exploited by these miners of the deep sea, and it is said that they have gathered in, a rich harvest from the unfortunate vessel's hull. STRIKERS' IX EGYPT. Owing to a queer provision of the law, strikers in Egypt on the street car lines are enabled to adopt a. novel and effective ruse for gaining their ends. The law states that no officer may touch a. private individual in a public property. Thus, when employees have trouble with a. street cur company in a city of Egypt fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to have such facilities as street cars, they put all the lines out of business by posting pickets in a recumbent position across all the car tracks of the city. The result is that traffic is entirely suspended until company aud employees reach an. agreement. Policemen may be summoned in squads, but they are of no avail in such an emergency. Though they may seize the goods and even the families of the offenders, they have no means whatever of budging the culprits. They gesticulate and 1 threaten, they swing their clubs as near as they dare to the noses of the employees, but all the response they get to their endeavors is a sleepy smile.

RECORD SLEDGE JOURNEY. The search for the North-West Passage was only in a degree less thrilling than Captain Mikkelsen's story of how he and his companion, Mr Uetlingwell, sought for the rumored, but undiscovered, and as he has proved non-existent land north of Alaska and west of Bank's Land. Captain Mikkelscu tells the story of his two years' (1906-08) adventurous exploration. The wonder of it is that it was accomplished in a vessel of less than 300 tons burthen, which was propelled entirely by sail and had no mechanical power on hoard to help it through the thick pack ice. Captain Alikkelsen explained that, when he set out, he hud no intention of reaching the North Pole. Persistent rumors had existed of a mysterious land to the north of Alaska, and the stories of Eskimo natives, who professed to have seen this new "country, derived some support from the theory that the drift and the pack-ice in these regions could only be explained on the assumption that an undiscovered island or continent existed there. Captain Alikkelsen made Eiaxman Island his headquarters and the starting point of his s'lodge journey over the ice. Captain Alikkelsen traversed no fewer than 3COO miles on a sledge. This is the longest journey ever accomplished in the Arctic regions by that means. After two years of. privation and endurance he returned safely with indubitable proofs that no land as yet undiscovered lay within the scope of his expedition.

SLAVES OF DRINK. •'The system of admitting alcoholic patients to the workhouse infirmary without any restraint whatsoever is simply manufacturing paupers by the hundred, who will, in years to come, fill and he the permanent inmates of your workhouses anil asylums." This is the verdict of Dr F. Fulton, who has alarmed the Infirmary Committee of the Belfast Board of Uuardians by a sensational report on the subject of alcoholic cases admitted, to the infirmary. Ue states that a large number of male and female alcoholic patients admil led to the observation rooms and surgi . cal wards are in delirium tremens on admission. They are the most dangerous and expansive patients that any hospital has.to treat, for they require the most expensive medicines and spirits to tide them over the attack, and are also most destructive to the infirmary fittings. The law allows the guardians to charge those patients who are able to pay 6s 6d per week, but this is ridiculously insufficient; the charge ought to be three guineas a week. "During the year 19C8," says Dr Fulton, "there were 5311 cases treated in the surgical wards of the workhouse. This number does not include those cases, a many of whom were alcoholic, which were treated in the surgical wards, and then transferred to other wards for further treatment. The number of days' treatment for alcoholic cases alone was 3715, an average per patient of 1% days, at a weekly cost of £3 12s for each person." The Infirmary Committee have decided to place the information contained in Dr Fulton's report before the guardians, the majority of whom are ignorant of the extent to which the ratepayers have been mulcted for treating these victims of their own vices. (MEASURING THE HEAT OF A STAR. A star ray, however bright, could hardly carry, it was_imagined, even the smallest fraction of a degree of temperature across such an immense area of space. But this idea was proved incorrect by the late Professor Samuel P. Laugley, who, with the aid of a wonderful instrument of his own invention called a "bolometer," succeeded in measuring the heat delivered, upon the ■earth by several of the stars, such as Alpha Centauri, Arcturus, Alcyone, and Sirius. For this purpose the star ray was caught upon a large mirror disc, which was so arranged mechanically as to follow the twinkling orb in the heavens, reflecting the ray in such a manner as to cause it to fall upon the centre of another mirror of concave shape. The second mirror, in .its turn, concentrating the ray, threw it upon a thread of platinum about the thickness of the filament a spider spins. Through this thread a current of electricity was kept continually flowing. In order to determine the temperature of the platinum thread, it was merely necessary to measure its electrical resistance —■ such resistance varying directly with the temperature of the metal—and this was accomplished by the aid of an extraordinarily sensitive galvanometer. The galvanometer in question, was a balance, the beam of which was a thread of spun glass five inches long and less in diameter than a human hair. lit tho exact middle of the beam was a concave mirror no bigger than a large pip-head, and so accurately made that it would fit perfectly upon a sphere about six feet in diameter. It also was of glass, weighing only two and oneTialf milligrammes—about as much as the hind leg of a fly—and was fastened upon a-square piece cut'from-, a" dragon fly's wing. The whole aft'air>;was suspended | from a fibre of spun quartz- crystal two feet long and one five-thousandth - of an' inch" thick. When the concentrated star beam fell upon the platinum thread, its heat,; inappreciable to ordinary, human sense,* raised the temperature of the metal, changing': its electrical resistance ■ correspondingly, and thus caused the beam of the balance to move. To record this movement, a ray of candle-light was allowed to fall upon the tiny mirror already, described, which threw it upon a measuring sqale of white paper, where; it- appeared in,the shape of a. tiny dotr-of light,' As this dot of ljght ran' along, the measuring scale it indicated exactly the 'amount of charige jn the temperature qf the platinum thread—in other words, the amo'imt of I heat parried by tho star ray.

the :mecca OF DEPOSED RULERS. -:Paris is| the recognised sanctuary' of kings and •;■ queens who have lost their power, especially,of men who have formerly ruled" turbulent South American

States, says a writer in Black and White. There used to be, and I expect still is, a little cafe in the Quartier Latin where there could be seen at one time two deposed rulers sipping their vermouth and comparing notes, one of them hailing from South America and the other from southern Europe. He from America was a Spaniard who, compelled to abandon affairs of State, went to Paris, and there joined the artistic and Bohemian circles in the Quartier, and became an artist of very fair ability. Paris is the Surgossa of deposed rulers. They drift there naturally, as if seeking pleasure to drown the sorrows of politics. King Otto used to be a familiar figure there. The Sultan's predecessor was also seen on the boulevards before lie was shut up in that veritable prison-house adjoining the Yildiz, to promenade its marble corridors and dream of his vanished power. Women who have carried the sceptre drift there also. It was not long ago that the captured Queen of Madagascar uttered a. pitiful appeal to the French Government to allow her a little more to live on, because her grant was so parsimonious that she could barely afford the necessities of life—she who once ruled in such gorgeous state in the southern seas. Another familiar figure there is the ex-Queen of Naples, sister of the late Empress of Austria. She lied thither with her husband when Rome became the capital of Italy under the »gis of the present Italian royal family. She used to run her racehorses under the title of the Count lso'la, and was very successful at all the principal French sporting meetings. At the present time she conducts one of the largest shops in Paris, devoted to the sale, of choice lace and similar articles from southern Italy, and all the profits she makes—and they are considerable —she sends to Italy for the benefit of the poor of Xaples and the adjoining districts. Small wonder, then, that she is loved in Italy, and that in some purls her popularity exceeds that of Italy's present rulers.

HUMAN SACRIFICES. An account of a recent sacrifice in the Philippines of a child to the gods is published (says The Times) in an official report, by Mr Allen Walker, the District Governor of Davao, in Al.oro Land. The account slates that a boy named Sacum was brought forward and' was. placed against a small tree ; his hands were tied above bis head, and be was fastened to the tree with bejuco strips at his waist and knees. A native named Ansig then placed the point of a spear at the child's right side, below his right arm, and above the ribs. The spear was grasped by other natives, who, at a signal from Ansig, forced it through the child's body. Ansig, a man about 60 years of age, says that in his life ho has attended, or officiated at. 50 human sacrifices, more or less. The report says that the natives who look part in the recent sacrifice were not conscious of wrongdoing, but that, upon investigation and proof, they have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Sentence, however, has been suspended on their promise to stop the practice.

MADAiIK MEI.BA IX AUSTKAIJA. On being interviewed at lu'emantle a few days ago, Aladame Melba said that sinwas delighted to lie in Australia again. ''My manager in Kngland told mo tlmt I was very foolish to sulfer pecuniary lots, ' she said, "but 1 meant to make ;i, thorough tour of Australia, and it is my purpose to sin:; at every important and unimportant town in the Commonwealth. I think I am physically fit for that, I shall stay in Australia, six or nine months, and after filling several engagements in Kngland ami America, will return again in fifteen months' time: that is, if you will have me again. You see, my great ambition is !o produce grand opera, in Australia, on ;i irrand scale. When 1 arrived in Naples last April on my voyage hack to Kngland, I mentioned the idea to Signor de Sana, director and proprietor of the Wan Carlo Theatre there. He is a lending impre-s----sario in ltaiy. The whoU' scheme was discussed, and Signor de Sana promised his co-operation ; hut when the scheme seemed to he assured a- complete success. J received a telcuram from Naples to the effect that .Signor de Sana had been stricken with p:iralvsis. The whole plan, therefore, fell through, but ] shall have it perfected bv the time I come out again next year. Nearly every rule will be iilled bv famous artists, and while I am in Australia this time 1 shall endeavor to collect a few basses." A W.TTALIKO STATION. The proposal of a Norwegian firm to establish a whaling station at Campbell Island, south of New Zealand, has led an old whaler to send the following note to the Bluff Press :—"Since T went on the Antarctic's expedition, when we got as far south as 74deg. in search of right whales no fewer than a dozen whaling companies bave taken up whaling in the southern seas, notably at Falkland Islands. South Shetland and South (leorgia. and more recently at the Kerguelens. Kuterprising Norwegians have had an eye to the promising fields along the coast of South Africa, and one or two more companies were being formed in Norway when I left to go in for whaling along the African coasts. The Kerguelen Company. in which 1 am interested, will form a, regular station. The expedition has taken a vast store of materials, some horses and shepe, and it is intended that the men, who arc all Norwegians, shall be later on joined by their wives."