PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1893, 2 March 1888, Page 21

PASSING NOTES.

There is one very prosaic yet horribly interesting aspect of the question Peace or War? of which the high personages with whom the decision rests probably think little. The question Peace or War? is in reality the question whether or not a million men shall die. The high personages themselves— the Czar, the Kaisars, the Sultan, their statesmen and diplomatists — are privileged noncombatants. The fateful question Peace or War ? is not a question of life or limb for them personally. War is with them an international game of chess ; armies are the pieces with which they play it. Some of these pieces will be swept oil the board, — that is a necessary incident of the game ; what matter, if the adversary is checkmated in the end 1 Men must be " expended " even as other munitions of war; there will be a big " butcher's bill " of course ; — what matter, if only the " butcher's bill " of the adversary is bigger? These high personages would be lost in astonishment and transported with rage if any of the million or millions they order to slay and be slain ventured to demur. " What 1 you rascals ; would you live for ever I " they would exclaim, like Frederick to his fugitive grenadiers at Eossbach, — " What other is the first duty of a citizen than to slay and be slain in quarrels he doesn't understand?" The submissive millions respond to an apostrophe of this kind with an alacrity to do and die, which, rightly considered, is the most amazing phenomenon under the sun. They will not always so respond. Some time in the future — say, circa A.d. 2888 — the fact that they ever did so respond will be interpreted on the hypothesis of universal lunacy.

Among all those who will be more or less affected by the pruning knife policy, no one is more thoroughly a victim of retrenchment than Sir Julius Vogel. He makes no plaint in words, but his actions are eloquent. He has been retrenched out of politics, and probably retrenched out of New Zealand altogether. With Ministerial salaries reduced to a ridiculously low figure, and a definite restriction seb to borrowing for years to come, what is New Zealand to Sir Julius now? The herbage is so scant as not to be worth nibbling at. There is absolutely nothing upon which to pasture a statesman of free appetite and cultured taste. Consequently Sir Julius is going Home to get out an atlas with exhaustive letterpress and illustrations, in whioh we may expect to find that queer bird the New Zealand politician depicted mournfully surveying a barren nest which circumstances do not permit him nowadays to feather. That Ministerial salaries have been cut down to an almost mischievously low sum there is no disputing. While New Zealand Bank inspectors and insurance managers are paid two and three thousand a year, we propose to pay a Premier one thousand to run our whole colony. Sir Harry Atkinson, a man of simple habits, who would sooner fight than feed, it suits ; but Sir Julius Vogcl bows and retires, and it is on the cards that a few other prominent politicians might do the same if occasion arose. Sir Harry, it may be, reckons that the easiest way to obtain undisturbed possession of the spoils is to make the spoils not worth contending for.

The Seacliff inquiry is over, all but the decision, and in this case the decision does not seem to matter so much as one might think. It may do harm, but it cannot possibly do any good. It may blast a reputation, but it cannot make one. We shrink from even speculating as to what this little commission appointed by a retrenching Government will cost. We know that it has been sitting for weeks at an alarming expense per diem, and that during the whole of this long wrangle between experts the asylum has been sliding nearer the sea or subsiding further towards the centre of the earth. This is really the question between the professional gentlemen whose reputation is touched in the matter, and they are arguing it out at the public expense. It is against this that I as a taxpayer feel disposed to kick respectfully but violently. The hundreds or thousands spent upon this inquiry are not spent to mend the public asylum, but to mend or mar private reputations. Why should the taxpayers' money be used to vindicate the reputation of Mr Lawson or Mr Blair, or Mr Brindley or Mr Gore, or any other expert? Why not use it instead to buy putty and fill up the Seacliir" cracks withal? Experts invariably show their expertness by disagreeing with each other flatly, and if they want to light out their disagreements they should provide the ring, and pay for their own referees and bottleholders. What shall it profit us if we hang and quarter any one of the gentlemen concerned in the Seacliff embroglio? The asylum will continue as restless as ever, despite this sacrifice. The mischief is that the building will not sit still, and it must be made to even if we have to chain it up as we have chained up a certain structure in Dunedin erected with public money.

The London Daily Telegraph has been discussing the possibility of inducing mankind to eat whale. Sombody, greatly daring, has dined on whale's flesh and reports it good.

One average whale would yield 50,000 pints of soup — somewhat oily, perhaps, but; nutritious and heat-producing ; good enough at anyrate for charity dinners to the poor. " An entire childs' school," says the editor, •' might be fed out of a single whale for the whole winter." That would depend, I should say, on the size of the childs' school and the size of the whale. It may be admitted, however, that what Mark Twain calls a good, ordinary, moderate-sized whale would comprise a great deal of solid eating ; ib may also be presumed thatalittleof it would go along way. Moreover, the cetaceans are a long-lived race ; the Telegraph has heard of specimens from 300 to 700 years old. There is a strong antecedent probability that even a middle-aged whale— say, rising his third century-— would be tough. All things considered, therefore, the calculation is not unreasonable that one whale would last a boarding school a whole winter. The editor supposes that this would mean a great sating to the boarding-school keeper. That depends on the price of the whale. Is it expected that whale meat will be cheaper than New Zealand mutton ? By the time that a whale harpooned on the coast of Greenland and towed into the Thames is delivered in the London market it will prove a somewhat expensive delicacy. We need feel no alarm. The frozen meat trade may not be particularly strong on its legs, but it is not going to be knocked over by what the London editor speaks of regretfully as the " neglected whale."

Correspondents of both sexes will please understand that on the leap-year-marriage question lam at present "full up," though the waste-paper basket is not. Two written offers of marriage descended into that devouring abyss this week, the recipient not having any other use for them. Accompanying one of these nattering proposals was an energetic warning against the blandismentsof "Alice," theeminently respectable editress of the Ladies' page in the Witness, whom the writer (age unknown) conceives to be her rival 1 " Dearest ' Civis,' do not foi a moment listen to ' Alice,' she is a designing creature." This is the kind of thing for which the waste-paper basket positively gapes, and, like the Sheol of the Revised Bible, is moved from beneath to meet at its coming. Nevertheless, be it understood that on the marriage question generally, I am on the side of the angels— that is, of the ladies. This is leap year ; let them persuade all the men they can to make it leap-in-the-dark year. They hare my best wishes. Every colonial patriot is desirous of raising the marriage rates, which marriage rate in New Zealand, I regret to learn, has fallen seriously during the last 12 months, and is lower at this moment than in England. Here are the figures :— England, 1886, HI per 1000; New Zealand, 1885, 13-3 per 1000; ditto, 1886, 11-98 per 1000. How explain this horrible falling off 1 Hard times, I suppose, and retrenchment. In Victoria, on the other hand, the land " boom " and Biining " boom," &c. have been accompanied by a marriage "boom," which has sent the rate up to 1516 per 1000. We, in turn, shall have our " booms "— never doubt ifc 1 But ifc is a pity that whilst we are waiting for them our marriageable young folk should be kept out of Paradise.

In my reply to " P. Q's." request for an explanation of the "curious fact" that "the upper spokes in the wheel of a moving carriage go faster than the lower ones," I have unexpectedly " struck ile." •• Explain it 1" I replied, " certainly I can explain it. The explanation is that it isn't true. How can any one point in the circumference ' of a rotating circle move faster or slower than any other point 1 To suppose that it can is the error of the kitten that runs round after its own tail in the mistaken belief that its tail moves slower than its head." This, with some more in the same vein, has brought upon me a deluge of elementary mathematics from half-a-dozen correspondents, all of whom write to corroborate " P.Q." and refute " Civis." Only one of them — alas ! — has the sagacity to suspect " Civis "of a joke, and his letter I give below. To that joke I plead guilty, and in extenuation allege the singular obtuseness of "P. Q." His " curious fact " is so little curious that any child experimenting with a toy wheelbarrow may understand its why and wherefore. Obviously the upper spoke moves forward, the lower spoke backward. At the end of a half revolution the extremity of the one is a whole diameter of the wheel ahead of the other. Tempted, however, by " P. Q.s " denseness, 1 alleged what seems the exact contradictory of this "curious fact," yet what is undubitably true— namely, that no spoke can move faster than another — that is, round the axis or common centre. Do my mathematical friends see anything heretical in that 1 li they so prefer, I will even state the fact in their own jargon : The angular velocity is the same for all the spokes ; the linear velocity (velocity of the ends of the spokes at their junction with the felloes) — angular velocity x radius. Nothing could be clearer than that, I hope. Anyhow, I can't make it clearer without diagrams. It is humiliating to have to explain one's own jokes. Idoit in this case by way of concession to the peculiarities of the mathematical mind.

Here is the one letter on this momentous subject for which I can find room :—: —

Dear Civis,— Will you forgive me for putting my spoke in the wheel of your concluding note of 25th inst. "P. Q." forgot and you (of course by way of a joke) disregarded the fact that each point in the circumference of a rolling wheel as it touches the ground becomes momentarily the fulcrum of the diameter, the power being applied at the centre of the wheel ; and that consequently the uppermost point, being farthest from the fulcrum, must move faster than any other part of the diameter. I know you won't deny a fact you know so well ; but "P. Q." should try the following experiment : — Take a wheel 14in in diameter, fix a piece of chalk at the top of it and another piece at tbe bottom of it ; roll the wheel so that the chalk will leave a mark against any flat surface. Actual measurement at the end of a quarter of a revolution will show that the curve marked off by the top of the wheel is about 20in long,' while that marked off by the bottom of the wheel is only about 9in long. It was a good joke though. — Yours wheelingly,

Whhblbabrow. Lower Harbour, Port Chalmers.

I observe that one critic who has rushed into print on the subject considers ifc " evident that * Civis' did not make a Btudy of

mathematics at Cambridge or the Sortone " (in charity let us hope that he means the Soroonne). Further, he "would strongly urge ' Civis ' to make a study of the properties of the cycloid." Here, verily, is a case for the proverbial surgical operation.

Since writing the foregoing I have seen Mr A. Brunton's learned discourse on wheels in the Times. Is Saul also amongst the [mathematical] prophets T Yet, when one thinks of it, nothing can be more natural. Has he not expounded to us again and again the mystical arithmetic of the Great Pyramid, the Number of ths Beast, and the wheel within a wheel of Ezekiel? Mr Brunton may clearly claim to be an authority on subjects of this class, and as "an old friend" might have ventured on addressing a " mild reproof "to " dear • Civis' " without asking permission. This refinement of courtesy is very cutting, and I offer Mr B. my profound remerciments. He is dull at scenting irony, and a joke is to him as a very millstone for opacity, but at least he has the grace in rebuking a sinner to draw it mild. The moral virtues after all outshine the intellectual any day. OiVis.

It is now generally understood (telegraphs oar Wellington correspondent) that the Government have made satisfactory financial arrangements such as will obviate any necessity for appealing to the London money market at present, and it will probably be found that no loan, not even the North Island million loan, will be issued until after next session, or at auy r&te until some weeks after Parliament has met.

But for the promptitude of Captain Connor, of the brigantine Enterprise, on Tuesday evening, there is little doubt a lad named Hutchins wouldhave been drowned. Hutchins, who is about nine years of age, was playing with other lads about the Jetty street wharf, when he fell into the water. He had sunk twice before Captaiu Connor's attention was drawn to the fact. On seeing the state of affairs, and that the child was on the point of losing his life, Captain Connor threw off his upper clothing and pluuged into the water, just managing to secure the little fellow an he rose for the third time. The captain then hailed his vessel, and ordered the boat to be sent to him. This was done, and the small boy landed much exhausted by his immersion. He was taken charge of by some friend and conveyed to his home. There is little doubt that but for Captain Connor's humanity the little boy must have been drowned.

The annual meeting of the Senate of the University of New Zealand was commenced on Wednesday, and was presidpd over by thp chancellor, Sir James Hector. It was intimated that the result of the November examinations had been received by cable, from which it appeared that 83 candidates passed for the various examinations, while 46 failed. The list of successful candidates will not be published until the examiners' reports are received by mail. Candidates have been informed of the result as received by cable, subject, of ccurse, to modification or alteration when the report is received. We understand that Miss Ferguson and Miss Flora Allan have passed the B.A. degree examination, and Mr Joseph Moss the first section of the same degree.

The life of the late Mr Andrew Bonar, J.P., of Kaukapakapa, who died at tho Auckland Lunatic Asylum, was insured for £50G0 or £6000, the premiums having of late been paid by friends in Scotland. The son of deceased, who is residing at Tahiti or one of the adjacent islands, will thus fall heir to & handsome amount. Deceased was a relative of Horatius Bonar the poet.

Mr George Sumpter was re-elected chairman of tho Oamaru Harbour Board on Tuesday. In his annual statement be said the revenue had increased by about £1000 during last year.

The Rev. W. Finlayson, Presbj torian minister at Pukerati, has accepted a call from a Canterbury congregation.

Mr Francis Fulton is the agent in Otwgo and Southland for Murton and White's Hawke's Bay sheep dipping fluid.

The addreos of W. W. M. Smith is Inquired for.

Messrs John Reid and Co. have a 200-acre farm in the Clutha district to let.

Saturday return tickets aro announced for the Dunedin Horticultural Society's show, on March 8 and 9.

An important sale is announced for the 16th in6t—Deepdell Run, with 19,320 sheep, cattle, howes, implements, <tc.

Mr \ John Everest will sell sheep, horses, dairy cattle, &c, at Palmerston on the 6th inst.

Messrs Reid, Maclean, and Co. will sell sheep at Clinton on the 9th inst.

The Canterbury annual ram and ewe fair will be held at Addington on the 22nd inst. Entries recaived up to he 15th.