NEWS AND VIEWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2650, 28 December 1904, Page 49

NEWS AND VIEWS.

The Archbishop of Canterbury caused •yen more ■ astonishment in. Canada than in England by -his association with Pierpont Morgan- throughout almost the whole of his American and Canadian travels. " The great apostle o£ Mammon," "the prince of financial fakirs,'' "leader of frenzied ] finance," " the most "ruthless financial mag- I nate who ",has ' ever dominated Wall street j and the industrial and transportation enter- j prises of the United States," are some of the names applied by responsible . journals in the Dominion to the multi-millionaire -while he was w.hisking the English cleric •bout in his special train, and taking him at intervals into the society of Bar Harbour j mhd other resorts of the cynical American | plutocracy. Some of the Canadians expressed a charitable doubt as to whether the' Archbishop could have been aware of Mr Morgan's sinister record, and of his being regarded, it may be with some exaggeration of prejudice, as "a huge financial swine, stuffed with bonds, coupons, thousand dollar bills, and bags of gold/ the result of deals which have brought ruin to thousands of investors. Switzerland has just celebrated th© annual religious ceremony known as the Federal Fast. The, first fast of the kind took place in the year 1639, being 'organised t by the Protestant cities of Zurich, Bern, : Basle, and Schaffhausen, as a thanksgiving ! for the immunity which the Protestant can- ; tons had enjoyed from the horrors, of fcbe j Thirty Years' War. The scope of the ceremony was afterwards enlarged, and in 1643 the day of .the fast was also appointed to be m. day of prayer tha,t the machinations understood to be against the Churoh.of England niight come to nothing. . Until. 1796 the institution remained peculiar i to .the .-Protestant cantons. In that year, ] howeyej^ it was- .decided, at a conference ] ield atXuoero&; that th© Catholic cantons i should fast "too, as • a protest against -increasing- luxury and" a thanksgiving" for the peace and prosperity of the Republic. The fast. .was abandoned in 1798 owing to the revolutionary troubles/ but was subsequently revived. It is, now general ihroughout the ] country, on the third Sunday in September,though its celebration suggests a day of public holiday rather than of national numiliation. Some statistics that have been -published chow that at the Swiss universities the males *re at last outnumbered by- the female students, the number of €ac two sexes on the j books in 1902-3 being 4790 and 4786 respectively. It is particularly in the Faculty of Medicine, however, that the ladies assert their numerical superiority, there being 783 female to 776 male medical students. Most striking of all is the number of woman medical students who come from foreign countries. There are 174 of them at Zurich, j 270 at Bern, 135, at Geneva, and 135 at | liausaroie- The total number of female students entered at all the Swiss universities combined has increased from 572 in the j summer of 1900 to 1024 in the summer of 1903. ! Mr John Foster Fraser, a familiar figure i in the House of Commons Press Gallery, and who hopes one of these days to oust j Sir James Woodhouse from the representa- ; tion of Huddersfield, writing to the York-. shire Post upon his impressions of Toronto, ] sayiw— "The only place I saw a hustle m was in the police court. I had a seat on the "bench, one morning alongside Colonel Dem- ' eon, the magistrate. He is a good type of j the breezy, unconventional Canadian soldier, j He called out the names of the prisoners Limself, and administered the oath himself to save time. With some acquaintance of the slow formality of an English court, I was a little breathless at the slap-dash manner in which he disposed of 40 cases in exactly 40 minutes. There was no red tape. The Colonel asked a question here and a question there, and 'You'll go to prison for 60 days. Send William Flannigan,' he wound up. There was an assault case. A lawyer asked for a remand. 'Do you say the prisoner didn't commit the assault?' 'No, your Honpr, I don't say that, but .' ' Well, he can go to gaol for 14- days. Send up James Sandford.' At the end of the 40 minutes I presumed to congratulate the Colonel on his expedition; *but,' I asked, 'you don't go so fast when you have a point of law raised?' ' I never allow a point of law to be raised. This is a court of justice, not a court of law. Not «o long ago a young attorney wanted to quote law against my sending his man down for six weeks. He wanted to quote Mathews, I think. Well, said I, Mathews may be a great authority on law, but I guess ne hasn't got as much authority as I have in this court. Your man goes down for six ■weeks.' " Dr Armitage Robinson has been maintaining the reputation of the Westminster Abbey clergy for elasticity of orthodoxy. Addressing some Sunday school teachers in Church House on a recent Saturday, lie dispensed with many things thai the orthodox have long cherished. The making of Adam out of dust, and Eve out of one of Adam's ribs were- Bible stories whTch he advised his hearers to regard as parables. The talking of the serpent and of Baalam's ass were treated as " imagery, which clothes certain spiritual lessons." These illtistra- ' tions will show Dean Robinson's line of thought. Prebendary Webb-Peploe is I chocked at the Dean's heterodoxy, and de- j ©lines to accent ma.v's n§w light in tins

place of God's written word. Other clergymen have expressed their surprise at Dr Robinson's opinions. Dr Clifford, on th© other hand, considers they do the Dean great honour. For himself, he says that he has not . believed in Baalam's ass for 35 years. A standard bushel measure with the date> 1601 has just been discovered in the Cambridge Corn Exchange, and has been the cause of a good deal of discussion amongst farmers and others on the question of weights and measures. In this connection we are reminded that the origin of all weights and measures in England was derived from a grain of wheat. According to the old statute 32 grains, well dried, and gathered from the middle of the wheat ear were to make one pennyweight, 20 pennyweights one ounce. It was afterwards thought best to divide the pennyweight into 24 equal parts called grains. William the Conqueror introduced into England what was called Troy weight, from Troyes, a town in the province of Champagne, in France. The English were dissatisfied with this weight, because the pound did not weigh so much as the pound in use at that time in England. Hence arose the term avoir dv pois, which was a medium between the French and the ancient English weights. The declaration that " a shipping note is one of the most wonderful things ever constructed by man" was made with all solemnity by Mr Sturges at the Fruitgrowers' Conference in Auckland recently. He was speaking of the' question of making shipping companies liable for losses incurred through, the pillage or rough handling of fruit in transit by sea, and he said that the J shipping notes, which were practically the same in all countries in the world, seem to relieve the companies from all liability. It was only, lie added, in glaring instances, involving- large sums of money, that claims were taken into court. Fruitgrowers, he said, generally did not find it worth while to attempt to. fight the companies over damage to shipments of fruit. Mr Jacques, the Government canning expert, spoke of a steel band contrivance used at Home for ' preventing the broaching of fruic cases, and suggested that it might be tried her©. " Oh, that would be no good," said Mr H. E. ] Sharp, "as they often run away with cases and all in this .country !"

The mystery attaching to Mr M'Calman's ' failure to - carry out his promise to marry the daughter of the Lord Mayor of London, conduct which caused a scandal about six weeks ago, has now been solved. Mr M'Oalman has gone back to his "duties in the Irrigation Department at Cairo, and it is not he who has permitted the truth to leak out. Not that he need to have been ashamed of his action, though th& whole incident has involved him in cruel accusations. His .refusal to lesd Miss Ritchie io the altar was prompted by the receipt of a letter from one* of the Lord Mayor's household, making a startling revelation: STr M'Calman satisfied himself as to the accuracy of the statement conveyed to him, communicated with his prospective* father-in-law, and then left for Egypt, bearing- in silence all the odium which his apparently peculiar conduct brought upon him. The secret has been divulged by someone else. '

Some statistics published concerning the Imperial Library of " Japan — the national public library — are interesting. The library contains 217,194 separate books, of which I 171,890 are Japanese and Chinese works, j and 45,304 are of European origin. Last i year the daily average of readers was 432.7, as compared with 692 for the reading-room of the British Museum. As Tegards the character of the books read in Tokio, while only 1.6 are classed as theology and religion, the highest percentage, 21.6, appears under the head of science and medicine, and literature and language are responsible for 20 per cent. Since 1890 there has been a marked and steady annual increase in the number of books issued and in the number of readers.

The latest census statistics published in Germany go to prove more than anything else that in the annexed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine the inhabitants are still very French, inspite of 30 years of German rule. -The marriage rate in the two provinces is considerably lower than the average throughout the Empire, and the birth rate is the smallest in all the German States. The Teuton emigrates to' America at the rate of 62 per 100,000 inhabitants. The Alsatian and the Lorrainer do. not care for the United - States as an outlet for the surplus population, and their emigration figures are much below the average. In 1902 there Were in the two provinces 12,896 marriages, 54,340 births, and 35,229 deaths. The excess of births over deaths is also below the average for the whole Empire. With regard to the migration to France, th© census returns give no other information than that it is still considerable.

The old question "Is aicofhol a food?" is discussed in a leading article in a recent issue of the Lancet. The conclusion arrived at is that beyond certain limits the poisonous action of alcohol more than counterbalances its food value: ".Alcohol has bee.n proved to be a food in the sense that when used in small quantities the energy from its oxidation may be used for some of the body's needs, but if at the same time it interferes with the normal activities of a most important organ its food value may be overbalanced by its toxio effect. Seawater may be used in the boiler of a steam engine, and the steam from its evaporation will transmit the energy of the. fuel to the revolving wheels, but its corrosive action on the steel forbids its use -except in emergencies." Our contemporary commends the analogy to thoughtful readers before they commit r.hemselves to a definite answer as to whether they should class alcohol as a food in the widest sense of the word.

For some time the post office authorities in France have been niueh annoyed by ari organised band of thieves who stole mail day after day out of the letter-boxes ; but now they have discovered a contrivance* which they are confident will put, a stop to Iniob. thefts in future. It consists of a oloek-work arrangement which is fastened to each lotter-box, and is to connected with the main post office that the moment anyone attempts to tamper with the mail a bell rings and notifies detectives who are on the outlook for the culprits day and night. When a letter is thrown into a box, or when a postman extracts the letters, the bell also lings; but the sound is different from that which is made when a thief is afc wevk, and therefore there is no dauber

that the deiectives will ever be led off on a wild-goose chase.

The long-expecl-ed motor water-carts beginning to make their appearance in Paris streets are highly bucces'sful. This new, useful municipal automobile carries HOOgal. The maximum speed is 18£ miles an hour. Each can be filled in six minutes, and can sprinkle a mile of roadway 45ft wide in 20 minutes. Steam is the motive power, a 35 horse-power engine being used in connection with a bevel gear drive and live rear axle. A connection between the wheels and the water-jets regulates automatically the output of the latter, according to the pace of the cart, and closes them altogether when the vehicle stops.

Dr Balfour, of the Gordon College at Khartoum, in the Soudan, seems to have succeeded in clearing that locality of the mosquito pest. It has been established that the mosquito at Khartoum is malaria-bear-ing, and i 3, indeed, held to be the cause of all the malaria of the country. Dr Balfour has attacked it in the breeding-places. In Khartoum there are 700 wells, and most of them are the haunt of mosquito broods. They have been treated with crude petroleum, which affects their public utility only for two or three days, but keeps them clear of mosquitces for a month. In order that there ma/ bo no importation from the plague-spots farther south, steamers are stooped a uc'le and a-half from Khartoum and thoroughly disinfected.

One of the most comical results of a printer's orror which hare been reported, for some time is recorded in the British Medical Journal: — "In Section I of the British Association, a, paper by Dr Adamkiewicz with the title ' Ist der Krebs ! canoer 'ereditary? ' — was on the jji'ogramnie. ' Erblich ' was misprinted 'eidhch' — eartliy. The London Times announced that a paper- Lad been read by Dr Adamkiewicz on 'Is the* crab a sea or land animal?'" Surely it would not be easy to beat this.