HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3215, 27 October 1915, Page 73

HERE AND THERE.

—Repair of Wounded Lungs.—

Engineering says that bullet wounds of the lung, provided no large vessels are touched, are seldom fatal in man or beast. A couple of remarkable instances of these injuries that occurred during the Boer war will prove of interest. Two officers wei’e reconnoitring, when one suddenly leapt off his horse with a forcible exclamation to the effect that he had been hit by a bullet in the foot. His friend likewise dismounted and proceeded to take off the w'ounded man’s boot and apply first aid ; both officers then remounted and rode back to camp. On the way the officer who had helped his friend complained of great pain in the chest, and before camp was reached he had fainted away. It subsequently transpired that a bullet had passed through his lung, and this must have occurred at the same Instant his friend was hit in the foot, but in the excitement the pain was not felt. This officer completely recovered. The other instance occurred in the person of a private who was wounded by a pompom shell, the diameter of which is linn. The missile perforated the left side of the chest, carrying away with it several pieces of ribs and destroying the greater portion of the left lung. After several operations the man left hospital and went on a globe-trotting tour, during which, with the object of turning an honest penny, he exhibited himself as a “freak.” Ultimately he arrived in Hongkong, where for some reason or other he managed to get gaoled. Later, he was discharged to the local hospital for a further surgical operation, during -which some dead pieces of the rib were removed, and ultimately he was discharged “cured.” —How Superstition Grows.—• Mr Arthur Machen, a journalist of the florid school, has afforded the country an illustration of the marvellous growth of a baseless superstition. Some months ago Mr Machen penned an interesting chapter of fiction on the British retreat from Mons. He introduced into his story a powerful description of a vision of angels, clad as bowmen, on horseback, who intervened between pursuers and pursued, threw the German cavalry into disorder, and permitted the British to escape. It was a good story, and when men like the Rev. Dr Horton and preachers of smaller weight made the incident a pulpit subject, hundreds of people were disposed to sink their incredulity. They had some justification for their belief -when news went round that several persons had actually seen the vision. Recently there have been two or three such confirmations, one from a colonel, -who was said to have “seen it himself.” But the colonel’s record is really not first hand. It is like the case of the 200,000 Russians in England who were never seen, but heard of by somebody, from somebody else. In this instance Mr Machen makes no claim that his story is anything more than fiction, but the ball goes on rolling, and Mr Machen’s volume of writings obtains a daily advertisement. —The World’s Timber Yards.— Russia will be the w'orld’s timber yard of the future, for no less than two-fifths of the Empire is forest land. In European Russia the forests extend over an area of about 345,000,000 acres, of which 214.000. acres belong to the State, 88.000. acres to individuals, 26,000,000 acres to peasants, and 11,000,000 acres to

the Crown, leaving 6,000,000 acres (under diverse ownerships. In Asiatic Russia most of the forest land belongs to the State. A conservative estimate puts it at 636,000,000 acres, a low figure when it is remembered that much of the land is as yet unexplored. Thus vast reaches of the timber belt in the Yakutsk provinces, bordering on the Arctic, which have never known the foot of civilised man, are roughly reckoned at 90,000,000 acres. Tho same is true of the vast forest areas in Eastern Siberia. It is safe to say that two thirds of the timber land in the Russian Empire lies between the Urals and the Pacific. Of the total 636)000,000 acres owned by the State, 238,500,000 acres are being worked directly by the Government, with a yield of about 300,000,000 cubic feet of timber, producing gross receipts of 2,100,000 dollars.

—Girl Railway Porters.—•

The girl railway porters who have replaced men wdio have left for the front have not yet mastered the art of stepping safely from moving trains. An inquest was held at Kensington on August 15 on Elizabeth Ann Dixon, 18, living at Clarendon road. Netting Hill, who had been employed for some week as platform porter at the Holland Park station, on the Central London railway. The conductor of a train which entered the station shortly before midnight on Sunday, said deceased handed him a ’ letter, and then proceeded to the front part of the train and gave a letter to Guard Bowler, who was on the platform between the first and second carriages. She then put her foot on the platform of the train as it -was starting, and rode towards the end of the platform. As she got near the end she jumped off, and, stumbling, fell on her back. The train carried her along the rest of the platform, her head struck the end of the tunnel, and she disappeared into the tunnel. The train was stopped, and her dead body was found firmly fixed against the tunnel wall. Revenue from New Stamp Issues.— Some of the smaller British colonies have derived a considerable amount of revenue from the sale of their postage stamps, not so much for postal purposes, as for the filling up of the albums of stamp-collec-tors. In a few cases the profits on this sort of business have been very large; and, were all the official reports quite candid on the subject, we might expect them to give the statistics of their export of new stamps; in most reports the information is hidden in the total figures of post office revenue and expenditure. In recent years it would not have been wide of the mark for the commissioner of a certain West Indian group to report that the prosperity of the colony is derived from the export of stamps and turtles. In seven years the Cayman Islands Post Office, with a total expenditure of £763, produced a revenue of £6814. If the stamps sold in 1907-8 represented the actual cost of prepayment on the letters despatched, the cost of the said letters to the senders would average 4s a letter. In 10 years Papua (British New Guinea) made a profit of £7098 on the sale of its stamps. These revenues are likely to be heavily affected by tho war. Who are the Turks? — The statement of a Turkish pasha that all aliens are to bo cleared out of his country, and that after the war Turkey will be for the Turks only prompts the question. Who are the Turks? Of the dozen or so different races, speaking different languages, the real Turks (if the Osmanlis may be so styled) form quite a small part of the population of Eurpoean Turkey (says the Daily Chronicle). If the pasha had his way it would give rise to an interesting social problem, since in the eyes of the Sultan all Osmanlis are equal. Thus, there are no class barriers to prevent an Ottoman Turk of humble birth reaching the Divan, and even marrying into the Royal Family itself. Peasant and pasha have the same dignified bearing, and all alike are contemptuous of the subject races they govern —sent apparently by Allah to do the dirty work. The Discovery.— One is always interested in the aftercareers of notable vessels. The Discovery, in which Captain Scott sailed to the Antarctic in search of the South Pole, is now at Manchester, from which port she is to inaugurate a new cargo service to Prance. The vessel, which is Dundeebuilt, and has a net tonnage of 421 tons only, is one of the strongest wooden ships afloat, her hull of teak and oak having been constructed of great thickness to resist the ice-pressure. This strength was of great value to her when she for so long imprisoned in the ice. The Discovery was bought by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and has recently sailed to England from New York. A Land of Hymns.— In Germany a hymn is sung on the smallest excuse. There are at least 100,000 German hymns; 10,000 have passed into German hymn-books, and about 1000 are regarded as classics by the German critics. We have borrowed largely from the enemy in this respect, and, indeed, until the modern revival of the translation of hymns from the Latin and other languages, Germany was almost the only source from which hymns, other than British, were taken for our hymn-books. Luther wrote a large number marked by rugged and intense power, and other writers whom wo know well are Rinehart, Von Loweusterii, Freylinghausen, and the Moravian Count Zinzendorf.