ON THE ICE AT MIDSUMMER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2111, 9 August 1894, Page 42

ON THE ICE AT MIDSUMMER.

Among the hosts of inventors there occasionally appears one who has really found a short cut to fortune, and who has ability enough to place the possibilities of his scheme before the right class of capitalists. Such a one was the fortunate French engineer who invented a system whereby ex f en»ive bodies of water could be frozen into a compact mass at any season of tha year, and made the permanent attraction of such institutions as the Pole Nord and the Palais de Glace in Paris.

These natural-ice skating rinks are kept very select. The prices of admission are 3fr in the morning, 5 r in the afternoon, and 3fr in the evening. When there is an allnight carnival, the entrance fee is 20fr ; and a supper table for six, including admissions, can be reserved on payment of lOOfr.

The Pole Nord cost £20,000, and the receipts during the first five montha exceeded this by £5000 ; the Palais de Glace, which was opened last December, and is half as laige again as its sister e^ablishmenr, recovered a fifth of its capital in tha first month.

Tho paten 1 ; ia but 18 months old ; thus it has taken this time to appeal to our own shrewd capitalists. Now, however, it is definitely arranged that London is to have a colossal natural-ice rink ; the plan* have been pa.sei by fis L CO., an '. i^e bu'lding will be op. red u'";tir tvxb CKrl l.a:n

The site •.i^oseu i* in Janus street, Westminster, and the brick and iron building will measure 250 ft by 120 ft, and cost £30,000. The floor will be one enormous tank lined with 600 tons of sheet lead, and intersected by hundreds of iron pspes placed Gin apart. This tank will be flooded to a depth of 12in by means of reservoirs placed at tV c side, and supplied from a w* 11 sunk 400 ft into the greensand, which yields the purest water. The engineer has specially noted the quality of water in the wells at Queen Anne Mansions and the brewery in Victoria street, both of which are close at hand.

Electric lighting, pumping, and freezing will be done by first-rate machinery, costing about £35,000. In the latter process, liquid ammonia will be condensed, and therefore heated, under great pres-urc. Ifc will then be passed through water tanks, and thence into the pipes at the bottom of ihe huge gkating reservoir ; at this stage it will generate lOdtg of frost, aad the w -.ter above it will presently be -r zen i t > -\ solid miss of nst oral ice. Altogether t'.i^ liu^t plice of recreation for Londoners will cost a^out £100,000.

The prices of admi.^.-iin, exclusive of ths hire of skates, will be 2*, 2i 6d, and 2s in the morning, afternoon, and evening respectively. Expert instructors will be in attendauce, and will pic themselves again- 1 our swell aiaatenrs. besides giving lessons in the graceful art of figure-skating. O f course there will be first-rate bands, and the interior of the building will be lavishly decorated

with flowers and palms, and warmed throughout.

Tne heating apparatus, however, will in no waj S'ltVct; the ico, as tho process of refrigeration will constantly bn going on below the ?uiface of the water. The ice will be swept by a staff of attendants, who will also put on skates for visitors, and the surface will be flooded from the side and refrozen every day.

Daring the summer season, ice for table and domestic purposes will be manufactured from distilled water, and sold at from 20s to 30s a ton. It is estimated that at least 60 tons a day can be produced, and during the hot months, when ice is at a premium, it will be anything but difficult to dispose of the output. DUELS IN A MENAGERIE. As a rule captive animals and reptileß live together, in their respective cages, oc the best of terms ; and, although there is occasionally an outbreak of a more or less serious character, that is no more than occurs among communities of human beings enjoying the benefits of which the lower orders know nothing. The keeper of a large menagerie iv Germany relates some interesting details about duels which he has witnessed. Boas, when they " fall out," attack each other with great ferocity. The most common cause of a dispute between these reptiles is the unfair division — or, rather, the nondivision — by one of them of the food thrown into the cage. Oar friend had two boas who lived together on the best of terms for a long time. One day the attendant was imprudent enough to throw a whole rabbit into the cage instead of dividing it as usual. The temptation was too great ; all ideas of friendship were forgotten. They both made for the rabbit, but the smaller boa was first. He seized the prey, but scarcely had he done co than the one turned himself around his companion in anything but a friendly embrace, and forced the smaller one to give up the rabbit, which he then proceeded to swallow. The disappointed reptile had his revenge. When the other was dozing after the meal, the smaller boa embraced him, and bit him so terribly that he died shortly afterwards. That was bad, but ia another similar case the ending was Btill worse for the successful boa, for bis companion deliberately swallowed him, and of course the rabbit he had eaten. When alligators fight amongst themselves things are pretty lively. Boas do fight about something, but alligators seem to fight without knowing why, and just for the fun of the thing. Our menagerie keeper had six of these creatures. Scarcely had they been landed when two of them started a little diversion, the other four joined in, and the battle became general. There did not appear to ba any sides in this game — each alligator attacked his companions indiecrimiuately. The result of the fight was that three of them had their jaws crushed, and all the others lost one or two legs, and at tha end of a fortnight they were all dead. It is the sea voyage which upsets them to such an extent, and the only way to prevent a free fight is to muzzle them with a strong cable for a few days. After having passed several days in the same pond without being able to indulge in the pastime of biting each other they become accustomed to living together in a state of armed neutrality, so to speak. A fight between a kangaroo and a hippopotamus must be rather exciting. A trustworthy witness gives an account of a duel between a pugnacious marsupial and an unwieldy amphibian which took place in Hamburg. In the middle of the night the kangaroo scaled the palisade of his humble dwelling and made his way towards the hippopotamus, which was sleeping peacefully near the edge of the water. Disturbed in hia sleep, the monster rolled icto the watsr and floundered away, but the kangaroo followed him. | At last the hippopotamus prepared for a tussle with his tormentor, and opened his gigantic jaws. The kangaroo, standing on his hind legs in tho water, which reached halfway up his body, played a tattoo on the meat vulnerable portion of his adversary's huge carcase — the noae. In vain the monster tried to crush his enemy between the rows of formidable-looking "teeth ; the marsupial was too quick for him, ai.d his jaw was always empty when he closed it wilh a vioious snap. Finally, thf>. hippopotamus pressed forward and managed to get his foe in a corner against the stonework. It seemed all over with him, but he executed a very clever manoeuvre, accompanied by a kick wir,h his hind legs and landid on the curb. What | would have bosn the result of this singular I contoo 1 it is impostiblo to say ; it wan cue short by the witness in que&ti'/r, who m liKi^d to ■• Vow n tunse around the bigaroo and chug him ignominiously out of the ring. — Journal de Manha. THE BEGINNINGS OP SPEECH. *• When we go back to the earliest forms of existug languages we don't seem much nearer your supposed primitive pooh-pooh and bow-wow than at the present moment." True, and why should we? It was all very well to suppose we could gfttback to primitive forms of speech while people Btill thought that Sanscrit or Egyptian stood appreciably nearer to the primitive laaguage than English or Italian. But we now know that man has existed on the world in his present form for thousands of centuries. He was here as a reasonable and intelligent being before the comiDg oe of the Glacial Epocb, which even cautious geological chronologists now put down as 200,000 years ago. Ido not doubt myself he was hpre as a t- inking and speaking animal in the days of the Miocene — say two million years bince, at a modest computation. Speeoh is a habit of immemorial and probably primruval amiquiiy. Therefore, even the earliest languages we now posses are practically almost as far from the primitive speech of Tertiary man as the " Idyll* of the King " or the " Earthly Paradise." I would as soon think of looking for orieioal roots of human speech in Plato or Jeremiah gs in Homer or the Vedas. And the eailiett form of most roots srems to us abstract and vague, I believe, only because we don't know their original associations. The oldest roots we have were millions of

years old in the time of the first Egyptian Dynasty ; they were already so worn and rubbed down by use tbat we cannot at, all pay what they wete like orgmally. lus!.e;-d oi nuina; (.runitive they were thea io. their dotage. Tiu real primitive root,s :ire those which, like the tJmd of a c\nuon ball or tbo 2>ing of a rifle bullet, are growing up every day around ns. Watch how language grows, and you will learn, it seems to me, how language greio. It is the old geological and biological doctrine of " causes now in action" applied to philology. Language is not a thing that once began and then ceased beginning. It never began ; it begins perpetually. There never was a moment when the cry of the beast passed into human speech; there never is a moment when human speech does not refresh and renew itself from these primitive sources.

Indeed, the wonder is that oar existing langaage, considering the enormous and immeasurable antiquity of most of its vocables, should still visibly contain so large an element of onomatopoeic origin. In spite of the constant nibbing down of roots and running together of words, there are still vast groups of modern symbols even now evidently imitative. Take in English such a class as murmur, purl, gurgle, sputter, splutter, bubble, plash, splash, swash, spurt, trickle, dribble, babble, ooze, mizzle, drizzle, gasp, wheeze, snuffle, sniffle, gush, and guzzle. These are only a few out of a whole set of (so to speak) mocking-bird words in which imitative sound is instantly conspicuous. Hear it once more in nouns or verbs likd pop, bang, snap, click, clash, crackle, crash, slam, slash, clang, roar, peal, boom, or racket. How indefinite is the transition from words like ding-dong, rat-tat-tat, rub-a-dub, and pit-a-pat, through words like hubbub, tattoo, quaver, and rumble to words like whirr, rattle, clatter, clack, hum, trill, tick, thump, jingle, tinkle, rustle, hiB3, buzz, whizz, tootle, and muffle 1 Wo put up our fi Dgers and say to a child" 'S a," do we remember that this is the origin of " the winds were hushed," or of the compound noun " huah-money " 7 When we speak of a creaking door, do we remember that the verb to creak is as purely imitative a? to jar, to grate, to clinJt, or to jangle ? do we think of it in tho same category whh yelp aud buir, with a Yankee twang cr a trill in music? I might give endless other examples, like bawl, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, shriek, screech, squeak, squeal, squall, whiue, moan, groan, or chuckle ; I might instance the hootiug of an engine, or the puling and piping of a spoilt child, snoring and snorting, to grunt and to grumble, barking, baying, yappiDg, yawling, growling, howliDg, snarling, bleating, the lowing of moo-cows, the mewing of cats, the neigh of the horse, the bray of the donkey, the cawing of crows, the cackling of hens, the swallows that chirp and chirrup and twitter beneath the twittering eaves. But I have mentioned enough to show the principle at issue; I need not run pell-mell and helter-skelter through the English language in search of jingles and jangles like these. They pervade the tittletattle of everyday life. We hear them cackle and cluck and chuckle at every street corner : they hum and buzz and reverberate about us. Whißt 1 I hear them at my ear. Tush 1 tut 1 you fail to catch them 1 why, you must be deaf to the ripple and babble and bickering of the brook, to the tinkling bells, to the volleys of artillery, to the drum, the gong, the trombone, and the hurdy-gurdy. I think your ideas must be all topsyturvy. — Grant Allen, in Longman's. BOY HEROES OF WAR. Im our army we find that many drummers and buglers have covered themselves with glory. Some boys will perhaps know that : affecting story of the Peninsular War. A little fellow wandered from his regiment, and, being taken prisoner by the French, was brought before Napoleon, who looked j upon him as a spy. Asked his rank in the British army, the boy said he was a drummer, whereupon the Emperor ordered a drum to be brought, and commanded him to beat the "charge." The lad complied with much alacrity. " Now bsat a retreat ! " aaid Napoleon. " I can't," replied the boy. "No such thing is ever known iv the British army. We never beat a retreat." " Very good 1 " exclaimed the Emperor. " You are a brave br>y, and you shall rejoin your regiment." Ho then ordered some of tho soldiers round him to conduct the litUo hero to the English iiacs, which the drummer reached in safety. H*>. was killed at Waterloo. During the Abyssinian expedition a bugler whos.e il iity it w<h to remain at Lord Napier's sir!e slipped away as our army approached M igdala, reached the gate before the storming party, and was the first to da&h into the enemy's stronghold. On returning home be received vis regard — he was decorated with the Victoria Cross. Another bugler greatly d'stinguished himself at the blowing open of th • Cashmere Gate, the grandest exploit in tt v > .Siege of D^lhi. 'Ibis lad formed one of tho piir y which accomplished thiu memorable fear, and he was obliged to soond tho " charge " three times before it could be heard above tbe firing of the rebels. He richly deserved the Victoria Cross that was conferred upon bira. j Splendid, too, was the deed of a drummer in the Crimea. One evening, id broad dajlif»V, h<* was observed to leave the tiecches bekue S.'-'oastopol with a can of tea in his hand. Heedless of the shower of shot and shell from the Russian batteries which poured around him, he picked hia way among tbe wounded, givicg our brave soldiers a drink. When the tea was all gone he threw the empty can toward the Russians in a contemptuous manner, and then walked back to the tranches. The noble generosity of tSis lad enabled many to endure their anguish until after dark, when parties of our troops brought in the wouaded. Several, probaoly, were by this timely aotioi .wed from death. This foct al^ns was 'louotless sufficient reward for tbe wonderfully heroic lid; hut be alto received tbe Victon.i Gross, w^:ch wns fastenc-d to hi -3 breast by t'-Q Quec-n htr.'elf.

Another case in p ,int from the Crimea, and, we have done. In one of the attacks on the *Reda.n a youthful lieutenant namsd Ma'-sey stood in a terrible fire with a calmness that astonished even the enemy, to induce the soldiers to follow. This heroic courage, in showing which he w&b very baaly wounded, won him the title of " Redan Massey," and when he left the service and resumed his studies at the Dublin Univer-

sity, his fellow students presented him with a magnificent sword, a well-earned treasure. — From Chums for June.