"SNYDER'S" SENTIMENTS, AS CONCERNING MANY THINGS.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1807, 8 September 1874, Page 4

"SNYDER'S" SENTIMENTS, AS CONCERNING MANY THINGS.

{From the Auckland, Weekly Herald.) It haR been said that some of us may entertain an ar.gel without being aware of it. I can't say, speaking for myself. 1 have, I know, entertained a good many people in my time ; but I don't think I was ever in such good company as that of an angel, whatever may come to pass at a future date. This, however, is neither here nor there.' I was about referring to one we have in our midst who embraces in his small corporeal capacity so many qualities that I wouldn't venture to say, when he is taken from us, who it is we have or have not been entertaining and making much of. I allude to Dr James Hector. "What that man is equal to or capable of performing no one yet dare pronounce. He is attached in some way or other to every department of the Colonial Government, and his duty consists in solving any difficulty which may be placed before him, no matter what shape that difficulty may assume. Should any member from his seat in Parliament desire to know the exact day and hour on which the first man placed his foot on New Zealand soil, the solution of the question is left to Dr Hector, and he soluteß it. He will tell you the exact distance of the earth from the sun, and to a second how long a cannon ball would take to reach it at the rate of a million miles a minute, or how much alum is contained in a baker's four pound loaf. He will give the constituent elements of the red herring of commerce up to the composition of a whale. He will calculate the orbits of Jupiter's satellites, and think nothing of it; or shew how many yards should be contained in a reel of cotton. Ask him about the moa and he will tell you the precise time he became extinct. Enquire how many animalcules are contained in the three-tenths of a drop of water and he won't be more than a million or two out. He is as well acquainted with the odic forces or the immortality of the soul as with the softening influences of soda in connection with the washing of dirty linen. He will analyse any substance you may chance to place before him and come to the bottom of it in no time. He will turn it upside down, and inside out, and get at it sideways or endways, viewing it near with a microscope, and at a distance with a telescope, and bring all sorts of complicated instruments to bear on it, experimenting upon it with acids and alkalis and dissolvents. He will submerge it in water, and auspend it in air, and pass it through fire, and resolve it into gases, and bring it back again in order to obtain its mean specific gravity, when finally lie will report upon it. I recollect once how he did all this with a mysterious substance discovered on the Bea beach. It had been thrown up tempest-tost by the wild ocean breakers as they rolled in their fury along the romantic bends of a rongh and broken coast line, under the terrific gusts of a nor'-nor'-east gale. This mysterious substance was a pulp of a light chocolate color, and was cylindrical in shape, tapering off to a jagged point. Submitting it to a very tender operation, the outer fold snowed an inner fold, and the inner fold a fold innermost to that—viewed vertically with a magnifying glass it was ascertained that there were a long series of circular rings composed of some filmy substance, one covering the other, just as is seen in a tree which has been sawn through its centre in ,

rwhich each ring represents a year of its age. pi? (Hector pronounced' the substance as something previously unknown to the world of science. It might belong to the animal world; or again^ it might be some organic substance, anterior to the antedeluvian era; or* said the lerned doctor, it might be fossiliforous of the palaeozoic period. He (the doctor) said the discovery was a most important one, and he would kepoet on it after he had ascertained its specific gravity. Why he never did I don't know. - I can only state,' what I will never bring myself to believe^that some one taking the mysterious substance in his hand, and putting it to his nose pronounced it to be the stump of a cigar which had been smoked by someone walking along the sea beach and who had thrown it away. No one believed this fora moment, excepting a green-grocer, who said he knew what it was by some dried cabbage leaf among' the inner rings. ,If Dr. < Hector has one speciality more than another, when, it may be truly said, he is all speeiaiity, ; it is in furnishing a,kepoet. 1 never saw his equal in this world. . , . He will report upon a comet or an earthquake with as much eaae and utter indifference as, he will report upon the growth of buttercups in connection with the fertilisa-. tion of the sedimentary deposits of the upper tirtiary formations. It is no more for him to pronounce in the shape of a report that the pigs submitted to him for analysis are of the sort of breed best calculated to produce the finest descriptions of crackling, than it would be for him to report upon the squaring of the circle, the trisecting on an angle, or shewing how easy and simple it is to produce perpetual motion. There isn't a man that can touch Doctor Hector for a report. You should lay him up with the gout in his toe, and with rheumatism in every joint in his body. He should be suffering with those ailments in connection with penal servitude for life, and he would do something to be placed in solitary confinement that he might find time to report upon the sanitary condition of the stockade he was locked up in. i Look at the report which the estimable Doctor has sent to my private address, entitled, " Colonial Laboratory Eeports." Why there is nothing we eat, drink, or avoid that be hasn't submitted to the most intense scrutiny. Had the subjects been live instead of dead subjects it would be impossible to imagine what their sufferings would have been. The doctor bas long had the name of being as humane as he is universal. Then why has he tried to make me, with many others, utterly miserable by taking away our relish, for all kinds of food? The flour my bread is made of, the Doctor reports, is frequently infested with acarus farina. I never knew this before, and I don't believe anyone else did. Then why should we be made to feel that we shall never enjoy a mouthful ofbread because of its being infested with acarus farince. Gooseberry jam, he says, contains tin and iron. Can the imagination depicture anything more frightful than when giving children gooseberry jam it has been mixed with metals from which tin dishes and railway locomotives are made. Harvey's sauce the Doctor pronounces of excellent quality, but I undertake to say that some of the sauce disposed of by our colonial youth without any charge will be found to be infinitely superior to any prepared by Harvey or the immortal Olson himself. Dr. Hectcr even condescends to experiment upon candles. He says hejhas tested them photometrically, by which it will be seen that Brandon's candles have an illuminating power of naught, naught decimal one and two naughts. Price's candles are a naught more in one respect, and a decimal five naught more in another. The Doctor has certainly thrown a light upon sperm candles which, I should say, must be very gratifying to those who are in the habit of using them. I can't help thinking that Dr. Hector is not quite up to snuff in treating upon that article, as he is perhaps with glaciera or an aurora borealis. He has analysed, he says, samples of snuff, and I find them adulterated with a little ferruginous earth and silica. I can't say that I know exactly what silica is, but I. do know this, that if I was to take an analytical chemist a verse of poetry, a newspaper, or a tune on the piano, or a political opinion, or a pumpkin, and say please analyse these for me, and you shall be paid for your service, I know that " silica" would be found in every one of them. 1 don't think Dr. Hector exhibited his usual scientific wide-awakeness in testing the samples of snuff. He went looking for ferruginous earth, and of course he had to get at the silica. But I don't read that he tried the " Bneeze test" to snuff which, I Bhould say, was the safest of all tests. Way I take a pinch out of sample No. 1 and and sneeze three times, while No. 2 causes me to sneeze twelve times, and shakes off several of my shirt buttons, wouldn't I pronounce No. 2 to be the best specimen for titillating the olfactory nerves ? Of course I should. Then again, in the matter of spirits, Dr. Hector states he tested sixteen samples, which included six brandies, two whiskeys, five rums, and two ginß. Now, I ask any man who knows anything about the subject of spirits, whether a man who mixes his liquors as Dr. Hector says he did could know anything about the quality of them. I tell Dr. Hector that six brandies, five rums, two whiskeys, and the same of gin is too much for any man at a go—l don't care how much science he has. Why, 1 couldn't stand anything like the amount indicated by the Doctor, and if I couldn't lam sure,he can't, excepting he is desirous of ascertaining the existence ot two moons on one night in the same hemisphere. •Two boot and shoe manufacturing machines, the order for the construction of which is in execution by Messrs Kincaid, M'Queen, and Co., of Dunedin, are capable of cutting 600' pairs a week of all kinds, being a quantity sufficient to keep going from fifty to sixty bands. The machines

are for Messrs Haig, Bramwellj and Cb's. Dunedin Boot Factory. Hivetting- stands and lastß, for the came firm, are also being made.—Times. Me Fox M.H.K.—At Wellington, on September 2nd, at the Presbyterian Schoolroom Willis-street, there was .a numerous assemblage of the advocates of temperance, the special object of the meeting being to express thanks to the Hon Mr Fox, M.H.E., for his action during the session iv forwarding the objects of the different societies represented—objects in which he has otherwise taken such an earnesf interest. The attendance would, no doubt, have been much larger had a more commodious room been available. As it was admission had to be by ticket of invitation, and, even thus limited, the scho,ol-room was crowded to excess. After tea and accompanying refreshments, Mr Carson, the chairman, next to whom Mr Fox and Mrs Fox occupied seats, addressed the meeting as to the object for which the meeting had been called, and expressed warmly, with the applause of those present, the feelings entertained towards Mr Fox by the members of the different societies and others, in regard, to hjs exertions, both in andjjout of Parliament, to the cause of total abstinence. At the conclusion of the chairman's remarks, Mr Fraser read an address which had been prepared for presentation to the guest of the evening.— Mew Zealand Times. The Hon. G-. M. O'Koeke.—The electors of Onehunga have for some days past been talking with warm admiration of the honorable conduct of their representative Mr 0' Rorke, and have mooted several ways of shewing to him their appreciation of his faithful services. At a meeting held on Wednesday evening, after various propositions had been broached, including a public reception or dinner, &c, it was at last decided to present Mr O'Eorke with a testimonial, in the shape of a piece of plate, with a suitable inscription. Amongst this constituency there is but little difference of opinion with regard to the resolutions, and that opinion is that the Provinces ought to go, and that the time has come when they must go, but that they should go all together. For Mr O'Korke himself—with the exception of a few sinister carpers, who cannot believe in a man having purely disinterested motives —there is but one feeling of admiration of his conduct, and it is hoped a handsome testimonial may be given him, to remain as an heirloom in his family.— New Zealand Herald. Miss Agnes Strickland, the celebrated authoress, is dead. Miss Strickland was the third daughter of Mr Thomas Strickland, of Reydon Hall, Suffolk, and was born early in the present century. From an early age she amused herself at poetical compositions, but her father discouraged this habif. She produced several poetical pieces, and published several popular books for young people. But it is by the historical works which came from her pen that she will be be9t remembered. In conjunction with her sister Elizabeth, she produced "The Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest," " The Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princes connected with the Royal succession of Great Britain," which last was published in 1850-9. Miss Strickland also published in 1862, "The Bachelor Kings of England," as a companion volume to " The Lives of the Queens of England and of the Queens of Scotland." Her latest works are —" How will it end?" published in 1865; " Lives of the Seven Bishops," in the following year ; and an abridged edition of " The Queens of England for the use of schools and families. In 1871 she received a pension of £100 from the Civil list, in recognition of her talent as a writer.