NEWS AND VIEWS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13374, 29 August 1905, Page 6

NEWS AND VIEWS.

Since tho laying of the cable, of the Commercial Pacific Company,.. which joins San Francisco with Manila, the telegraphic circuit of tho earth is completed, and it became possible to measure by/the ordinary method of telographio longitude tho arc across the Pacific, and hence- to complete tho entire circle of tho globe. Of necessity this must bo equivalent to. 360c10r, or 21 hours of time, ami the interest lies in noting how nearly tho sum of tho links which go to make up tho whole approximates to this total, and thus obtaining some- indication of tlio degree of accuracy which attaches to such operations. There are several routes across tho Eastern Hemisphere by which tho ends of the Pacific cable might be joined, >nd taking ore direct route, via-Madras.-it appears Hut the "closing error"'is less than a fifth cf a. second—that is to say, tho sum of the various links exoeeda % hours by only 0.174«c0. Another interesting fact oomes out. His Pacific cabla consists of four sections, divided by transmitting stations j>t Honolulu, Midw.iv Island, ami CSuam, the total length of cablo being 7846 nautical miles. Tho time that, a signal takes to traverse this length— nxeludinp- that occupied by reading and rassincr on tho at the intermerijite stations—is 0.618, not quite three-quarters of a second. Writing in Knowledgo on " Tlie Nature of Life," Mr Geoffrey Martin arrives at some interesting conclusions. Life* he sa.vs, is old, old as'tho universe itself.' It has always existed generally throughout the universe in some form or other, and always will exist, no matter what happens to our little' earth. Tho protoplasm of the earth is but tho product of evolution of untold ffions of-ages, coming down to us in an unbroken lino from ages when tho world was a vast liquid globe of white-hot material. All the elements have circulated in succession through its structure, and then passed out again. First, at tho highest temperatures, came the heaviest and least volatile elements, then as , the temperature fell they gradually wero eliminated,! and their places Vi'cro filled by analagous lighter and move volatilo elements, until at last living matter assumed its. present composition. But this rcplaoomehfr of denser by lighter elements is now almost complete, for tho principal elements already present in living nutter aro carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, wid hydrogen, And these, it will bo noticed, arc anion* the very lightest non-metallic elements which, so far as wo know, exist.. No lighter elements, then, cau replace those- already present in the organism, and therefore there can be no further very great alterations in tho' temporcturo of liririg. matter in the comincr a£O3. But the world is still cooling. Consequently, ago by age, century by century, the contrast between the temperature of living matter and tho temperature of the surrounding medium is becoming more and more- accentuated, and tlie difficulty of maintaining -life is steadily iuereasing. Hei thinks, therefore, that so far as Ilie surface of "tJiis earth is concerned, organic life is entering.into its last stefieof evolution.. Tho present Marquis of Queensberry, in M.A.P., writes pleasantly about the years he spent as Lord Percy Douglas in West Australia in the nineties. After trying the United States and Ceylon, he accompanied Mr David Carnegie to Australia. "On arriving at Melbourno we. heard of Bailey's find at Coolgardio. 'Off wo 'rushed, and landing in Albany with 30s between us got as far as Perth, and, meeting a brother Scot named George Smith, who backed us, were enabled to purchase" provisions and four, horses, and started for Coolgardie, 420 miles : away, amidst" the jeers of the populace, who said 'new chums' like ns would never traverse that" terrible, waterless track." Mr Carnegie afterwards made a namo for himself as an explorer. ' Lord Percy revisited England, marrying tho daughter of tho Vicar of Boy-lon. - After a year's absence lie resumed his goldfielct experiences, and might have stayed permanently in West Australia had 'he not, in IE9B, became heir to a iharquisato by the death of his- , cider brother. Hi 3 daughter, Dorothy, ho says, "was born in Perth, so I have a strong tie through her with Australia." In 1900 he succeeded his' father, the sporting : Marquis of Qneensberry, who, it will be remembered, visited Melbourne in ■ the late seventies, presiding over the Slavin-Burlce nugilislio-contest, under the chapevonage of Mi , Joo Thompson.

Sir Oliver Lodge, in opening a new dental hospital at Birmingham, spoke of the close connection between teeth and health. He asked an eminent dental surgeon why it was that our teeth were- becoming so bnd, at least among the civilised portion- of humanity, and lie ."said it was duo.to the development of tho brain. It appeared that' brain and teeth could not exist together. The more brainsvone had the fewer- teeth one had unless ■_ they were artificially provided. It certainly did appear that teeth wore p.inonu. those parts of the human organism which'were tending to become extinct, like the toes, for all toes, he ex ; peeted, wou!d';go if we persisted in wearing boots.. A special set of-natural teeth would no doubt be, among' the curiosities in the museum of the future. If we continued, a? some people would'say we ought to have ■done, to live on.'mits and plentv of vegetables, with an occasional raw bird thrown in as a" deljcucjr, and vcry-littloraw meat, then we might'have preserved our incisors as they were intended'to be. He did not think it was;that we had too many brains; he thought it was really that we had insufficient brains, and that the remedy was a. homoeopathic remedv—a little more brain. People said , wo had too much eoienee because we had learnt how to make smoke and' noise',:-..and'to , spoil the ; face of..the country in, :' many .ways;'." but;, the fact was we had got■■ just enough science to make a mess of things', and' i(ot enough to put. them right / .We'had to po on, and that was what' universities'existed for. i'