A CRITIQUE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1602, 5 August 1882, Page 23

A CRITIQUE.

By Kiwi.

Some of the statements of Professor Parker in his recent lecture at the Museum on " Fermentation," as reported in your issue of the 29bh ult., are too tough in the fibre to be benefited by the ordinary process of mental mastication, and must; either be gulped down in globo, at the risk of inflicting the horrors of indigestion, or Jaid aside. I prefer the latter course for the present, and will endeavour to render a reason, merely adding that if the Professor, or anyone else,, will kindly correct me where wrong, I Bhall be de-; lighted. 1. Regarding yeast, the Professor says—" Tbat in' all probability the yeast all over the world had de-j acended from the yeast originally used by the Egyptians at the time they first began to brew." To; explain the difficulty of understanding whence the " world's fjrey fathers" obtained the original yeaat as' a means of obtaiuinjir the good liquor to satisfy their, thirsty souls, the Professor accepts the hypothesis of. Evolution. He thinks it probable that the first cupful of the original yeast originated from some fungus; plant. At present we will let this piss ; but it is instructive to find that four thousand years ago men' were as fond of their beer as they are to-day. " One' touch of nature makes the whole world kin." They even got " tight," and sometimes disgraced themselves shamefully. Occasionally, too, some of the most, bibulous would be " run in," and fined the next morning half-a-Pharaoh, or the usual alternative, for creating a row in the streets of Memphis or Thebes.; The attention of our Mr Jago, I fear, has not been' sufficiently alive to the evils wrought by yeast since the date first assigned to it by tne Professor. Bad; beer is bad enough, but bad bread is much worse, and. bad yeast is largely to blame for it. Bad bread at one time nearly finished the author of this able article (ahem !) ; it certainly killed poor Thackeray outright ; and there is reason to suppose that it once nearly settled a monarch in the same way— and mark the catastrophe ! In the long line of Pharaohs there was 1 one who had a careless baker, and the natural result of his using bad yeast was the bad bread which on O"e occasion caused the monarch to know experimentally all about the unpleasautness of flatulency and dyspepsia. To preserve one's usual equability under these conditionsisimpossible, andtbe monarch hanged his baker, for the encouragement of others. I quite approve of it. A similar visitation of justice in this country might be a Blight incentive to our own bakers] to furnish an article of better quality and weight 1 And what a pedigree have our light four-pounders I Look back, and see them tracing their ancestry through our whole English history, past the Norman Conquest, beyond our bold Anglo-Saxon forefathers, to the time when Cfeesar landed in Britain with his legions ; thence through the long centuries of Roman history, with its thousand years of emperors, reputy lies, and kings, and all their murderous wars, into Greece, the academy of the world— the little country) that has produced philosophers, statesmen, sculptors, 1 heroes, poets, and warriors that have never been sur^ passed in magnitude or number. All these kneyv, something about yeait bread ; but " Excelsior !" is the cry, and the humble loaf has yet higher to travej for its origin— according to the Professor. Greecq obtained the greater part of her knowledge from Egypt, and, we are to understand, yeast among th« rest. Here in this land of wonders— whoreiu every, thing sublime and ridiculous, majestic and mop. strous, civilised and cruel, jostled side by side— did yeast find its cradle-hed. So says the Professor ; and our familiar loaf and too-familiar beer are ita off-j spring. The celebrated " Dizzy " once said that thaj Jews were a civilised people in Egypt when the present muddy-blooded nobility of Europe were bar-: barians in their dens and forests, and would flourish' as a pure race long after these parvenus had passed au ay. And now we are to believe that our familiar 1 31b I3oz may claim as illustrious a lineage, and may certainly expect for it as lasting a futurity. But \i there no bar-sinister on the escutcheon ? Is the pedU gree pure and undefined ? That is open to question.' 1 think I can adduce one instance at least of yeast having been begotten apart from the defilement of a brewery. There lived in Dunedin twenty-two years ago a well known character, a baker, commonly called " Sandy," clever in his business, but eccentric in his, habits. Being dissatisfied with his brewers' yeast, he one day threw out the lot, scrubbed and scalded his vessels, and set to work to make his own. Malt, hops, sugar, and potatoes wero its constituents, and thai yea9t served him many a day after, much to his own satisfaction and his customers'. Does the Professor mean to say that yeast such as is used by brewers cannot bo made in a similar way by brewer or chemist? If bo, the Egyptians of forty centuriiS back could teach the Professor a lesson on Chemistry as well as on Evolution. j 2. In referring to the supposition of yeast having been derived from some fungus by the process of Evolution, Professor Parker stated that there was a great deal of analogical evidence to support this view, " such as that of the descent of wheat from grass) and fruit trees from wild plants." Now, these asserj' tions are unsupported by any experience, and appear incredible. At what date did such events take place J Can any chemist or college to-day, by any process whatever, evolve in one year, or fifty years, wheai; from grass, or even from oats or barley ? Can any horticulturist, by any art, produce fruit trees from wild plants, or flowers from a class of tree which was never known before to bear any? Can any Evolutionist give positive evidence of such having ever taken place at any stage of the earth's histoo' ? Assertion is one thing— proof is another. Modern philosophers are apt to utter positive nonsense at times under the guise of wisdom, and raise brilliant superstructures oil hypotheses. What, for instance, to an ordinary mind can seem more silly than the words of Sir W. Thompson : that there is nothing unphilosophical in accepting the possibility of the first germ of all life on this globe to have Deen derived from some other planet? And this before the most learned savants of the day, who received it with all respect 1 Yet, if there is any truth at all in the world " The earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the fruit tree yielding lruit, whoso Beed is in itself, after his kind, »nd God saw that it was good," long anterior to the school of Evolutionists who endeavour to dwarf the Infinite Mind to their own vagaries. Notwithstanding the confident assurances of the Professor and his school on the laws of Cause and Effect, thero is much reason to believe that until he can tell us something more of the operation by which wheat was produced from grass and fruits from wild plants, the great bulk of the Christian world will remain firm in their faith of the old record of Gonesis.

An action brought by the proprietors of Punch against Messrs Standerwick, hosiers, of Bristol, and Messrs Hodgell and Stephens, auctioneers and advertisement agents, of Clifton, came before Mr Justice Chitty the other day. An interim injunction was obtained a fortnight ago, when the Court was informed that the defendants bought large numbers of copies of Punch, which is published at 3d, and sold them for Id each, after putting on it a wrapper of their own with the title of Punch on it, and advertisements for which they are paid. They also put between every two pages of Punch two pages of their own paid advertisements, and it was against this act that the plain tiffs sought the injunction. The defendants having, since the interim injunction was obtained, agreed to desist from the saifcl acts and pay the plaintiffs' coats, the case waie settled in this way, »