PASSING NOTES. (From Saturday's Daily Times.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2244, 4 March 1897, Page 3

PASSING NOTES. (From Saturday's Daily Times.)

" BEN " Tillett has no doubt endured a great deal in his time. The biographical | glimpse of hie career in a leading article in The Times shows that he has bad considerable difficulty in aobieying his daily bread until the dock strike furnished him with the opportunity and a billet. No doubt he deserves it — i.e., the billet. He is evidently gifted with that fluency which is the chief | tool in the labour agitator's basket. And it has to be borne in mind that we have heard, I or read, Tillett at his worst— that is, when he was sick, — which leads ns to a vague surmise of the extent of his verbal fecundity when be is well. Well or ill, it may be questioned whether he ever ran against what is vulgarly called such a "Bnag" as he encountered on Monday evening at the Trades Hall. It is bad enough to be captured the moment you put your foot on a Btrange shore, and carried away in the train of an enraptured coterie of labour leaders, being expected to make speeches on any and every occasion, but to Lave alleged poetry hurled at you is inhospitality carried out to the extent of refined cruelty. Yet we must not regret the circumstance, for it has thrown quite a flood of light on Roman history. We now learn that unionism is no new thing, for Sparticus unfurled the crimson flag in Ancient Borne. Mr Tillett is, apparently, old Sparticus reincarnated, in which event he must find the spirit several sizes too large for his body. For my part I am delighted to hear that unionism has so respectable an origin. What puzzles me is the identity of Sparticus. I am like Mm Gamp, sceptical — "I don't believe there ain't no sich person."

" 'Tifl better to huve boomed and bust than >ever to have boomed at nil," And. the inpnates of the craft that now strew the shores of the financial tea no doabt realise the truth 'of tbii. They have at all erentj the comolation of being able to recali the glorious time they enjoyed vrhen youth was at the faelm and pletsura at the prow and a cheque book contained potentialities of wealth bpjonatbtwildflitaifiaißlolaTMiaa. Who

was it that enpyed being dunned because it showed ' that at all events he once had credit 7 One can only faintly realise how muca pleasure exiata in life when s man is confident that the bank will honour his cheque to any amount, and no doubt many are now aghast at their own moderation in the matter of drawing cheque*. The ruosfc singular feature of boomß is that few get out of them in time. The viotim keeps on buying for the rise, hoping to add yet a little to his store, until one fine morning he finds the bank door closed. Banks have a perplexing way of closing just as someone is about to make a coup. In this respect a bank resembles the American male — you never know just exactly what it will do next. A correspondent sends me a ' little story which demonstrates the widespread nature of the unbelief in the reliability of banks :— The other day, picnicking by the Taieri j River, I tied the bout to * tree while we had I lunch. A pretty strong tide trets running, and ] the following conversation took place : — Wife, to me : Are you watching the boat ? Bgo : Oh, yes ; theritor bank must give w*y before that boat goes-adrift. Precocious Niece : I wouldn't be too sure, i There is no saying what Colonial Banks may do. - That is a very precocious youug lady, indeed. The current of her wit is bo strong that it 1b running a " banker."

j The trouble In Crete brings into ridiculous 1 juxtaposition the ancient and the modern, i Just imagine modern ironclads blockading the j Phasua ! Fancy a modern soldier — perhaps j a scont mounted on his bike— desecrating j the fieldf sacred to the memory of all that is classical. To this day I remember an " imposition " I received for not translating this passage correctly from Greek to Euglieh :—: — " Ships of war are said to have been first rigged out by Parbalus or Samyres, as others by Semiramis, but according to some by JEgaeDß. They were farther distinguished from other sorts of ships by varioun engines, and accessions of building, gome to defend their own soldiers, others to annoy enemies ; and from one another in later ages by several orders or ranks of oars, which were not, as some vainly imagine, placed upon the same level in different parts of the chip, nor yet, according to others, directly and perpendicularly above one another's heads ; but their seats, being fixed one at the back of another, ascended gradually in the manner of. itairs." So said my trusty "crib " in English which I should be sorry to father nowadays. Fancy, if you can, Leonidas armed with a repeating rifle and the Pass of Thermopylae swept by Maxim guns. Contrast Pharos with the electric searchlight, the catapult with the d it appearing gun, and the phalanx with formation in square. A Karatheodorus looms acrosß the page. with the vulgar familiarity of Smith or Jonet, and perhaps we shall yet hear of a Captain Mfltiades or a General Themistoclcß. What we might colloquially call Greece's " cheek " has prompted ncr to defy all the Powers, and probably she will obtain possession of Crete. This is another illustration of the impunity with which a very small person may attack a very large

I was somewhat struck the other day with a remark which occurred in "Current Topics" in dealing with the railways and their, regulation*. The British railway manager regards the public as in need of protection against itself; the American manager takes and gives the widest liberty, and, in effect, tells the public to look after itself. Hencd the development in Americans of a sixth sense, which, for want of a better name, we may call the sense of precaution. Unfenced railways run along the streets, and canal swing-bridges open and shut without warning, yet the American never falls into a trap. Among animals, also, there is a sixth sense which is called the sense of locality. This enables them to return to their homes by instinct. The common garden snail has it. An experimenter destroyed the centre of the sixth sense in a snail's brain, and the snail became at once a homeless outcast — a vagrant, in fact, without a local habitation. The ambulatory flea, also, — the "shammy" of Mr Kerr — ie a home-going insect. If it be marked, its favourite resting place on a dog or a cat can easily be determined. After feeding it will invariably return to a certain spot to enjoy its nap in peace, for, though it may appear strange, fleas are good sleepers, and require a large amount of slumber. In the process of civilisation this sense has in men' become blunted from disuse, and perhaps that other one is now only being recovered by the Americans beoause cf necessity. It is a great pity man has lost the homing instinct. It would be extremely useful to the hope-

lesaly fuddled, inebriate in his search fcr his T domicile.

• The following letter explains itself : — i Dear Civis, — I see the* Times has begun to i insert tales of the intelligence of animals after the manner of the Spectator, and, though the big gooseberry season can hardly be said to have commenced, repeats a story about a fight between two old men kangaroos. I may be very obtuse, but the only indication of intelligence I could detect was in the last few words, whioh told how the kangaroos bounded away when they saw that they were observed by man. But ( surely that is no proof of intelligence, for a ; donkey would do the same, and asinus vulgaris < is not generally credited with a, superabundant ) share of the quality of being intelligent. ; Perhaps he hat been maligned. I have j even been maligned myself. My present; j purpose, however, is not to recapitulate the j wroags I have suffered, but to narrate for your benefit an instanoe of canine intelligence whioh I observed this week— in point of tact, at the Womeu'i Franchise.picnic at Quarantine Island on Cap day. I need not tell you "how wet it was ; nor need I say how much we eDJoyed the copious downpour of our favourite element. Women who lave the franchise do not necessarily despise their own comfort, whenoe it befell that j we sought shelter in the buildings on the island. To while away the time we had a concert, and , one young lady duly essayed the task of i pleasing the others in song. She had not well j commenced her song when a little dog advanced | and quietly made ids way forward to the feet of the singer. Once there it rose ou its hind legu, humbly crossed its fore paws, and in that attitude of meek petition seemed to mutely beg j the singer to desist. The audience took in the J situation before the singer did, and when she also became aware of the cause of the hilarity her song suddenly ceased, and the mute prayer was answered. What de you think of that P What do I think of it 1 I think that dog would be worth its weight in gold if only to accompany one to prohibition meetings and such like.

Unless one is very careful, it is dangerous j to dabble in these Btories of intelligence j among animals commonly called lower, j Occasion al tippling in them may lead to fuddling, "and when in this condition one may even become a retailer of each stories himself, when he is lost indeed. I am tempted, however, to dip still further into the Spectator, because a recent number' contains a lucubration from Nelson, New Zealand, and it is headed " Reason or Instinct in the Kea." One 0. Hunter Brown dilates, for the information of the great British publio, upon the kidney-eating proclivities of the kea. He says : — It is very inquisitive. 80, when its haunts were first invaded by the shepherds, and "it first; saw curious erections of their sticks of timber, and dangling from the crois-btx that very novel object*-, * freshly butchered sheep, it naturally proceeded to investigate. It liked the odour. The delicate white kidney fat looked tempting, the bird tasted it, and apparently liked the taste. It often came again. Them having a good bump of " locality " — and having, perhaps, watched from a distance the curious prosess of butchering a sheep— it proceeded to locate the kidney in the liviog animal. Then alighting on the sheep, it tore op^n its back, and devoured its favourite delicacy alive, fatally for the poor sheep. Great numbers of sheep were lost in this way. At one time the Government offered a bounty of Is a head for these keas, and large numbers were shot by the shepherds and others. Thus Mr (I presume it is Mr) Hunter Brown, who seems, however, to ascribe to the kea a larger amount of intelligence than it is entitled to. May it not have been that the kea was originally a bird of prey, and was compelled to live on berries because the supply of animals fell short, and that his hereditary instincts were ronßed by the rght of freshly-killed sheep ? Mr Hunter Brown has written all the way to London to tell us nothing new. If he had told us that the sheep, goaded to frenzy, turned round and attacked and devoured the keas, it would have been about up to the level of an average Spectator story. Civis.