AT THE FALL OF THE LEAF.

Otago Witness, Issue 2288, 6 January 1898, Page 53

AT THE FALL OF THE LEAF.

Why do the leaves fall ? •' Bless me, I don't know," you answer ; " I suppose because it is one of Nature's arrangements."

Precisely ; but why did Nature so arrange ? Why not have summer time always, with perpetual foliage ? What ia the meaning of denuded branches, withered fbwere, daylight fading in mid-afrernoon, and winter's cold and desolation ? When you find out why the leaves fall you will have discovered one of Nature's deepest secrets — v.hy men die.

Supposa we try an easier problem. Way should Mr William Steel have written such a sentence as this?— "At the fall of the leaf every year I got into such a state that I tooJe no pleasure in anything." No doubt; there are minds so highly strung as to feel keenly the influence of outward conditions—changes of the weather and of the seasons, and so on. Bat they are rare, and for practical purposes they ought to be rare. Oar friend Mr Sfceel, happily for him, waa not ona of fJu s m. All the same, he was a miserable man every dims the leaves began to rattle to the ground.

Hero's the way he puts it : •' Afc the fall of the leaf every year I felt languid, tired, and weary, aud took no pleasure in anything. My appetite was poor, and after everything I ate I had p*in and fulness at the chest and sides. Then there was a horrible pain at the pi« of the stomach, wliieh nothing relieved."

Now this sort of thiag would spoil a man's ple.io.ure any time of year, bufe the oddity in Mr Steel's case is thafe it always coincided with what you may ca.ll Nature's bedtime.

" Alter a few months," he says, " the pwia and di',trfsj would be easier for awhile, bai as autumn appvoachtd I became aa bad &g ever. In S pit-mber 1890 I had an unusually bad t;me of \K. I couklu't touch a morEel of food, aad presently S Os so weak I was uuable to staud on my legj. Every few hours I had to be poulticed, the pain was so "ojkl. I went to bed and stayed there for a week; with a doctor attending me. He relieved me a little, but somehow he didn'b succeea ia get! ing to the bottom of my ailment. "

That may be, but it doesn't quite follow that; the doctor waa in the dark as to Mr Steel's »il« ment. He might have understood it right enough, yet failed to cure it because he had no remedy for it among his drugs. That happens all the while. Stiil, the render may ask, What's the good of knowing the nature of a complaint if we possess no medicine to cure it ? There you have us ; no use at all, • to bs sore.

Weli, Me Seeel goes on to say : " Fo? somi times ( coutuiued very feeble, and \ras hardly abie to walk across tb.e floor. I£ I took a short walk I t'eit so tired aud done up I didn'b know where to pub myaelf . This was year after year for six yearp.

'" Finally I read about fehe popular medicine caiUu! Mother SeigePs. Curative Syrup, and mdde up my mind to try it?. So I began and k<pl oa with ifc for sowe tiisse. The result -vr&i that the pain leffe me and my appetite waked up, and my food tasted good and digested well ; and presently I waa strong aud hearty as sver. That was three years ago, aud tha trouble has iKvei 1 returned. (Signed) William Stc-el, H*mti-;ton, wear Oakhem, Rutlandshire, D,coinbT 5, 1893."

Mr Stftel is grocer &cd postmaster &fc Hatnbletor), and his case i-j well known there. His complaint isn't hard to see through ; it wss indigestion and dyspepsia. Bat; wfey did it cosse on only in the autuasn ? Whafc had the rait of the leaf to do with it ? Lsh the reader study on that point. Meanwhile it is a conaForS to know that Mother Seigol'f! Syrup will cure ifc no mattef when ifc coint-s on.

— Some toy factories in England recoivsd so many orders for Turkish and Greek lead soldiers for this year's Qhtistmas ssaaon that they h*d to refuse to accept any more, as they would be uaible to deliver the goods. — There are now three completed elscfcrie railways in Japan, and work on four other ro?-<2s has begun — one an electric rail.vay, 50 milss long, through a number of smail towns in the vicinity of Kobe. Current for the Una will be generated by water power. — During the Indian Mutiny only SSB British soldiers were killed in battle. — Thirteen crimes were punishable by death when the Queen ascended the throne. To-day there are bat two — treason and murder. — A mixture of 90 per cent, of lime, 5 of re=in, and 5 of calcium carbide is claimed by an Italian, H. de Fazi, to ba better and more economical than calcium carbide for producing gas. No special burner is reg lired, and there is no fear of explosion from mixture with air. — A sum of £9700 is annually expended on sand for the London streets to prevent horeea slipping. — It is well known that left-fcundedness has often been observed in animals. According ts Vierordt, parrots seizß objects with the left claw by preference, or exclusively. The lion strikes with tbe left paw, and Liviugatone gave it as hia opinion that all animals are lefthanded. Professor Jordan has recently verified the statement with regard to parrots, f" found that this bird makes a readier un= the left claw for climbing than the right. — As to the use of the "X" rays as a depilatory, a case is reported in which a lady patient was entrusted by a physician to an electrical engineer, who placed her opposite a tube for 20 minutes at a time on four consecutive days. The patient declared eho felt no effect ; kali at the end of the week she found that ths ) '^S. " rave had removed the skin.