"THE EARTH QUEST."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9322, 24 August 1908, Page 2

"THE EARTH QUEST."

* ' A POPULAR SCIENCE LECTURE. (By THE OFFICE LUNATIC.) Foreword. — The Office Lunatic broke. [ off the chain on Thursday night and wandered down to Canterbury College. He afterwards appeared with the following deliverance, which was firmly declintrl by our morning contemporary. The Editor does, not hold himself responsible for anything herein contained, as it is suspected that the Office Lunatic was slumbering during the recital of most of the events which are here put down. Dr Height essayed in the course of a popular science lecture on Thursday evening at Canterbury College to take his audience with him on his now historic journey from the Creation onwards, but his manuscript was rather unwieldy, and, after getting to the | 999ntlv folio, he "took the count at the ! year 1520, and the tfudience is at present stranded, somewhere near Cape Horn, where he left them in, the course oi Magellan's great circuinnambulatory feat in the s.y. Ramrod, Captain Wails, around the Great Unknown. Dr Height, who appeared for the occasion i a. black and white, the college colours of the Creation, commenced at the Beginning at a pretty solid pace, but, running out- of the straight, he was going well within himself at the sod Wall. In the Primary of Polseozoio lap he foozled at the Archaean hole, but made a good recovery, and was advantage in at the Silurian period. From here on he quickly lessened the gap to the Old Red Sandstone period, which he passed at 120 miles an hour by Benson's chronograph without turning v hair, and holding three aces. A head was burnt, at the Carboniferous era, [ but ho was lying six up at .the Prussic Acid period. At the Jurassic . furlong post he was going at about 200 strokes to the minute, but, although he shipped a little water, he managed to keep a dry seat, and was lying all square at the tenth hole. He passed the Eocene period at a slackening speed, having had some ignition troubles, but he, was slipping along easily at the Oleomargarine period, and come back to the second speed on the Miocene rise. He afterwards adopted the trudgeon stroke and breasted the Pliocene and- Pleistocene periods manfully, but when within a mile of the Plasticene period the set of the current was too much for him, and the item was regretfully cut out of the programme. Dr Height made a break of 76 to the Dark Ages. These were illustrated by lantern slides, the illustration taking place when the lantern would not work properly. Coming down to the Restoration the lecturer got on a long sprint \u an endeavour to elucidate the great problem of whether the original college library was one and the same with the present Waltham library. In this discussion the lecturer was assisted by voluminous Acts and Bills quoted by the Chairman of the Board and the Mayor, but he suffered a good deal from tyre troubles, and was ordered off the track as a menace to shipping. Dr Height also spoke for some time about the historical antiquity of the world. He burbled, on about the Babylonian age, and mentioned such old friends as Anaximander of Miletus, who invented inhaling without choking, and other old friends such as Eratosthenes, the author of the now famous epigram quod erat ipso factum, and also librarian at .Alexandria. Thift gentleman, it is alleged, was a relative of the present chairman of the Board of Governors. Mr G. W. Russell, to whom he supplied a good deal of the information regarding the early history of the notorious College Library and its endowments. . It was all very interesting, but the people got into a quandary wondering where the title came in. The Office Lunatic, the Tame Poet and the Incubus nearly came to bloughs in the argument as to whether the earth had quest or not. The question on being put to the meeting was; lost on the voices of the night, and Dr Height was accorded a vote of thanks and confidence in his ability to have completed the whole journey on from 1520 to the time of the Farm Labourers' Dispute if the Conciliation Board, in taking the evidence, had thrown the ball out straight.