TRAINING SHIP FOR BOYS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9662, 3 November 1899, Page 4

TRAINING SHIP FOR BOYS.

The New Zealand Times strongly supports I lie report of tho committee of the Legisln- j live Council set up on the motion of the Hon. W. Jennings on' the subject of establishing a training ship. Mr Mills, of the Union Steamship Company, gave valuable evidence before the Committee, declaring that a training ship for New Zealand youths would ue very desirable in order to fit young men for tho local mercantile marine service. At present many boys are sent out of the colony for training, and in some cases the parents pay high premiums. In the course of the evidence it was also pointed out that a lad who served two years in a training ship would bo qualified as an ordinary seaman, and ufter another two years in the mercantile marine he would be qualified to pass as an officer on ocean-going steamers. As matters Btand, if a lad desires to adopt seamanship as a profession he must become apprenticed to the owner of a sailing vessel, tuid the applications are so numerous that high premiums are charged. Of course in the establishment of local training ships boys from reformatories or tainted with crime ! would be excluded. That experiment was I once tried at Kohimarama and egregiously failed. Captain Blackburne, Nautical Adviser to the New Zealand Government, estimates the cost of a suitable vessel at £2COO to £3000, and the annual expense of maintenance at £6400, which might be considerably reduced by contributions paid by parents. Another point that ought not to be lost sight of is that, as it is on the cards that a naval station may be established in this colony, boys might pass from the training ship to to the navy. It would he necessary of course to amend the Shipping Act of 1894, which pluces restrictions on ihe employment of colonial boyfi following a seafaring life.

At a meeting of Wellington citizens a( committeo was set up to make arrangement? for holding a show of New Zealand products and manufactures in Wellington next winter. The N.Z. Times tolls a good story about I some of the deals in ImrseflcMt during the time the Now Zealand contingent was being equipped for the Transvaal. Ai - certain Wellington medico bought through his agent a very stylish carriage liorsc down South at a good price, and the animal was duly shipped from Lytteltnn with a consignment of remounts for the contingent. Somehow the hoives became mixed up during the trip, and the swell I carriage horse got metamorphosised into a screw worth about five or six pounds. Tho medico ia seeking a solution of the mystery. The most recent, and at the same time the most startling, of automobile excursions is that which Dr Lehwess, of the , Automobile Club, proposeß to undertake ' in the early part of next year, says a London paper. His scheme embraces nothing less ambitions than a journey from l'ekin to London on a motor-driven vehicle, a voyage of 8000 miles, the greater portion of which is through practically unknown country, inhabited by people whose customs and method of receiving travellers am certainly fur from being all that might be wished. A singular accident occurred to a boy namad Dadley, aged 13, a pupil of tho Prince Albert College, white playing cricket in the Auckland Domain last Friday. He ami another boy ran to catch the same ball, when they accidentally collided, Dadloy having his forehead dented in by the force of the collision. He walked to the hospital, and was at once put to hed. In a short time he became unconscious, and had two fits. He was operated on the came night for the depression of the forehead, and a piece of bone removed which was pressing on the brain. He has since recovered consciousness, and is now progressing favorably. If the English language is soon to be the universal tongue, one is inclined to feel rather sorry for those who have to acquire it. For according to a German statistician who has made a study concerning the comparative wealth of all the languages of modern civilisation, ours is the one which heads the list, with the enormous vocabulary of 260,000 words. Germany comes next, after a great drop, with 80,000 words ; then follow Italy, witn 75,000 ; France, with only 30,000; Turkey, with 22,500; aud Spain, with 20,000 words. ForUw.-.tely the liteTiure of a nation does not depend on the number of words in its vocabulary, for did not the Frencli masters of the pen in the 17th century work with the small capital of 5000 words ? An inspector of the New South Wales Agricultural Department has been visiting the United States, and was surprised at the enormous scale on which harvesting operations sire conducted in that country. ' The steam harvesters are remarkable machines. They run on three wheels, two big drivers with tyies 7ft wide to propel them, and a third steering wheel. Tho cutter bars on them are frequently 32ft, and sometimes 40ft, long. This monster machine moves along at the rate of seven miles an hour, cutting, threshing, and cleaning the whe.it, binding the straw, and throwing the grain into bags, in which it is shipped to Atlantic ports. A steam harvester costs about, 7500 dollars, and Mr Cobb said he had been told by the men who owned them that they proved a paying investment. They yield him a good profit on his money and his work, and pay for themselves in five years. They are seldom owned by the men who own the wheat field. The owner of the harvester agrees to get the grain in at a certain amount per bag. A steam harvester will take care of 1600 bags a day. A graphic account of a collision with an iceberg is given by Mr Frederick Law, a passenger on the Atlantic liner City of Rome. He writes to a friend :— " We had just finished dinuer, about 6 o'clock, and as I got on dock in the fog I heard the look-out man call out, 'Iceberg ahead! 1 Engines v/ere at once reversed, but too late to prevent the awful crash, which brought down and smashed every portable article to atoms. There was one mad, wild rush for the deck from all quarters of the ship. Some women and children fainted, and strong men cried like children, the report spreading that all was over and the ship sinking. The crew behaved splendidly, and, through their discipline and precision, a catastrophe was averted. The bow of the ship was considerably damaged, and the front compartment rilled with water. I have seen one of the most beautiful pictures one could imagine— one solid, towering mass of ice looming out of the fog, and swished into all the colors of the rainbow by the backwash of the engines."