CURRENT TOPICS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4573, 18 February 1893, Page 3

CURRENT TOPICS.

- . - — — -— ♦ . The Sardinian town of Salti is a veritable Arcady. The inhabitants lately petitioned the Government to allow them to form a < community . of their own, instead of continuing to be an integral portion of Buddeso, which is forty miles away, ■ The Government sent a Commission to inquire into the motives of the petitioners, and the official report contains an account such as would astonish ua were it descriptive of an American " city " out west. " Salti," says the report, " has no Town Council, no police, no clergymen, no physician. It possesses no post office, no church or chapel, no school, no registrar's office. On the maps of the kingdom, although it contains 1,200 inhabitants, it is not marked. And yet the State receives taxes from the people, but sends no tax collector to receive them; the taxpayers are compelled to undertake a journey of sixty kilometres once every eight weeks, in order to pay their taxes. Once a year, in May, all the children born during the year are taken to Buddeso in block, and there baptised. The dead are buried in the most primitive manner and without any trace of religious rites. Marriages are conducted on the same system, without any formality or ceremony, and are deolared later on to the registrar or parish priest, sometimes long after they have been blessed with issue. Vaccination and medicine 'are only known from hearsay. The children grow up without schooling or instruction of any kind."

In March, 1891, a vein of iron, supposed to be native, was found in Arizona, and. specimens of it were sent to Mr Foote, the geologist. He examined one carefully, and found it to be meteoric iron. With extreme difficulty a cut was made through it, and this cut revealed a hollow, which, to the surprise of the examiner, contained small black diamonds. Beside them lay little grains [ of amorphous coal, and one piece, when treated with acid, gave a white diamond ; half a millimetre long. Diamonds were ! not discovered in aerolites till 1877, but nobody suspected their presence in meteoric iron. The German mineralogist Meydenbauer made the following statement seventeen years ago :— " The diamond can only bo of cosmic origin, it both originated simultaneously with the primitive rock, and fell as an aerolite in later periods of the earth's formation. Scientific investigation at the places where diamonds are found mighb throw much light on this mysterious subject." Thia assertion has been fully confirmed during the last four years. Moreover, Julius Stinde, a German scientist, holds that it is from meteors that all our diamonds come. He bases his conclusion on the fact that no powerful volcanic process to which carboniferous matter could be (subjected in the interior of the earth would be likely to produce diamonds ; that the diamond-bearing earth ,ot South Africa is not stratified, but arranged in a series of cones or funnels of vertical formation, as though resulting ff° m a fall of matter fco the earth, and tnat diamonds have been found in meteo-. rites. '