HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3117, 10 December 1913, Page 77

HERE AND THERE.

Moonlight and Decay.— The. observation that the rays from the moon favour putrefaction detracts from the romance which has long been- associated with moonlight. , It is an old tradition, the Lancet points out, that to sleep in the moon’s rays was a dangerous pro ceeding, and there is such a thing as “ moonbJink,” a temporary blindness, said to be due to sleeping in the moonlight of tropical climates, while some observers have reported a devitalising action of the moon’s radiations on vegetable life. There is even quoted a death the cause of which was officially stated to be exposure to moonlight. Apparently the food mo 4 seriously affected by the moon’s radiations is fish, and seemingly trustworthy statements have been made as to the ill-effects produced in persons who had partaken of fish which had been freely exposed to moonlight. Mr E. G. Bryant, 8.A., B.Sc., writing in a recent number of the Chemical News from Port Elizabeth, South. Africa, suggests that a possible explanation of these phenomena, assuming them to he true, might lie in the wellknown fact that tile light of tiie moon, being reflected light, is more or less polarised, and possibly polarised light may exert a peculiar chemical action. When two slices cut from the same fish were hung, one in the direct lig'ht and the other in the polarised beam, Die latter invariably began to decompose before the former, though the temperature of__ the polarised beam was several degrees lower than the direct light. There were indications also in the case of other perishable food substances of a tendency to decompose when they were bombarded with polarised light. The question, the Lancet thinks, is worth further investigation. It would be curious to find that such terms of obloquy as “moonstruck,” “ mooney,” and “ moonshine ” were after all not entirely empirical. Eight Thousand Trees Felled.— Eight thousand trees have been felled, and one of Surrey’s acknowledged beauty spots ploughed up to provide the >St. George’s Hill golf course at Weybridge. Eighteen months ago the course was a forest. Pine, fir, beech, and oak trees shaded luxurious undergrowth, and rhododendrons. bluebells, and a wealth of wild flowers flourished. By the kindness of the late Admiral Egerton and his family the public were free to loam over this charming place practically at will, and it was a favourite haunt of picnic parties. Then came Mr Lloyd George’s Budget, and land-owners began to consider the responsibilities which land had to bear, and to devise ways of lessening their anxieties. >So St. George’s Hill came into the market, and was acquired by a local svndicate with original ideas of estate development. They had nearly 1000 acres to deal with, and they planned to leave a certain portion with the mansion, another part, comprising the old British Camp and the Rhododendron Valley, as at) open space : to devote something like 130 acres to a golf course, several more acres to tennis courts, croquet greens, archery, and other pastimes; and to develop the remainder for the building of houses of a superior class, each in from three to 10 acres of the land on which the best of the timber had been preserved. Tailors’ Idle Dreams.— One of the fiats- which has gone forth from the Tailors and Cutters’ Exhibition,,, just held in Soho, is that men’s clothes are to he brighter. We are to go about wearing garments of joyous hue. But, alas! for the ideals of the artists who wield the shears and make the Englishman the best-dressed man in the world, we nre not likely to see those gay days of colour back again. This business was settled definitely and for ever nearly a century ago. Wellington not only broke the might of Napoleon: he inflicted a deathblow on masculine colour and finery

generally when he braved the scorn of the fashionables and went to Almack’s wearing trousers. From that moment the power of the beau declined. What would be i,aid of the head clerk or even the junior partner who turned up at the office in nankeen trousers, a plum-coloured sack jacket and a flowered waistcoat? Unless he could prove that he had left a fancy dress ball too late to change into something less chromatic he would be in danger of incarceration as an amiable lunatic. Clothes have changed simply because the world has changed. Men wore steel until bullets were made to pierce their breastplates. The dandies wore ruffles and high-heeled shoes in the days when the streets of “the Town” were too dirty to walk in, and when they seldom stirred out except in sedan chair or coach. But as life becomes more complex clothes become more simple. —Female Constables in Berlin. — The Police President of Berlin has taken an important step in the development of the police system in that city. About a year ago the experiment was undertaken of appointing a number of women to assist the i>olice in special departments of their work, and this experiment has proved so successful that it has now been decided to appoint a large number of women -as constables. Hitherto the principal task assigned to the female constables was to exercise vigilance over the street-walkers, who are hero subject to a regular system of police supervision ; but it is now intended to extend their functions by putting them on the track of baby-farmers, agents of white slave dealers, palmists, adventuresses, and kleptomaniacs. They will also have a fruitful field of activity in looking after the growing class of "wise women,” the term here applied to a shady category of midwives. Special courses of instruction are to be held for the women who intend adopting the new career thus opened to them. The female constables will not carry any outward token of their office : but they will be invested with the same powers and authority as police detectives, and they will be ' entitled to a pension after a number of years. It may bo mentioned that Berlin is not the only city that has female police officials, as they are also found at Mayence, Bremen, and other towns. —Strange Story from America.— According to a San Francisco paper an attorney-at-taw rejoicing in the Scotchsounding name of J. R. Ochelshaw-John-son has left for London to press the claim of Charles Edward Gordon, of Wrangell. Alaska, to the estates of the late Sir Robert Henry Huntly Gordon. Charles Edward also claims to be "Marquis of Huntly,” and mentions among his estates Aboyne Castle, "now occupied by the Earl of Aberdeen” (sic). The claimant says his father and two brothers died in 1882, leaving him "sole surviving heir to the Gordop estates.” The present Marquis of Huntly, however, has occupied Aboyne Castle and the rest of the holding since 1863, and the gilt-edged volumes which contain the records of the peerage make no mention of Charles Edward—nor even of his father, —so that Mr Oebelshaw-Johnson has rather a hard job in front of him—despite bis power of_ attorney and the enthusiasm engendered by the promise of half the estate for himself. Charles Edward, who claims to have been globe-trotting since he ran away from Yarmouth College at the age of 14, won’t he disappointed, however. He says he cares nothing for titles, and meantime he has got a photograph of himself and his Eskimo wife and two of their four children into the American papers. What more could any man want?