People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 708, 8 March 1933, Page 6

People and Their Doings.

International Arrangements for Relaying the Press Reports of the Test Matches : Advice on How to Enter London : Australia Gets a Touch of the “Shivers.”

■yyHAT is the right way to approach London? Thomas Burke, in the issue of “The P.L.A. Monthly” for February, urges that we should take boat at Greenwich and come up-river to Westminster. “If it were possible, I would like all foreigners who visit us to enter in this manner, as foreigners enter New York. As it is, our' railways give them, as a first impression, the dreariest and dirtiest sides of the city; and the approaches by road are no better. They do not approach London; they crash into it, or rather, into its dust-bin. But if we could bring them to London Bridge or Westminster by boat, then the city would reveal itself to them slowly, point by point, in accumulating majest\’, until at last, by delicate and apprehending progress; they would come in the right frame of mind to its centre. From the river it can be seen and felt, in its detail and in its magnitude. Buildings, spires, towers, bridges, are open to the wide view, as they never are on the railway, or even on the road. Instead of rushing through a nest of slums in a closed box, they w T ould come in open air, at a quiet pace, along its main highway, and would be able to perceive, on either side, the gradual thickening of its tributary features up to the ultimate and nicely timed climax.”

READING REMARKS in the “Bulletin” about the “Shivery Isles” or hearing Australians express amazement and horror about the Napier earthquake, it is some relief to be reminded from time to time that this country has earthquakes of its own, writes a Sydney correspondent. The latest incident of this kind has been recorded at Gunning, in the Yarn district, about 170 miles from Sydney. There for about a month the residents have suffered a -whole series of shocks—at least 100 in all. They do not last long—about thirty seconds on the average—and they have done no serious damage; but they are accompanied by ominous subterranean noises, and like all such visitations they have severely tried the nerves of the people who have been forced to experience them. When anything that seems remotely related to geology goes wrong in this country an appeal is made at once to Sir Edgeworth David, in the hope that even if he can’t put it right, he will explain it; and he never disappoints.

JT IS ALMOST A PITY that both the Lower Houses of Convocation last week refused to ask for the appointment of a committee to deal with a subject which, at some time or other, is of close personal interest to most people, writes the London “ Truth.” The backers of the proposal—a felicitous word in the circumstances— were anxious that the Committee should provide “ practical guidance ” to the clergy as to the best way of teaching their parishioners to go about “ courtship, betrothal, marriage and parenthood ” with, later on, equally practical guidance in composing conjugal tiffs A Clerical Guide to Discreet Courtship might very well have a large circulation as an addition to the already considerable Library of Unconscious Humour. Christians have been Exhorted to greet each other ‘‘with an holy kiss,” but a maiden whose swain greeted her with a Convocation kiss would probably have a few pertinent remarks to make on the subject. W 9 CIXTY YEARS AGO (from the “Star” 13 of March 8, 1873) City Council. —Owing to the absence of a quorum there was no meeting of the City Council last evening. The members present were his Worship the Mayor, and Councillors Jones, W illiams and Calvert. The Council will meet to-morrow at 11 a.m. Public Works. —A cablegram from the Agent-General to the Colonial Government received by last mail from Australia—informs them that 1500 tons of railway iron left London in December for Canterbury and Wellington, that other plant was ready for despatch, and that all orders sent home were in hand. Board of Education. —The Board met yesterday and amongst the more important business' transacted was the appointment of a committee to select a site, from the offers sent in to the Government, for the Normal School, also the unanimous adoption of a recommendation to his Honor the Superintendent to proclaim an educational district which shall include the Borough of Kaiapoi.

WWW jglß EDGEWORTH DAVID has told a listening and slightly apprehensive Commonwealth that “ the shocks are not caused by any special force acting at Gunning itself, but probably by some great pressure in the floor of the ocean to the east of Australia which forces itself against the New South Wales coast.” Gunning happens to lie near the great dividing range which is “ a line of special weakness ” in the earth’s crust, and where there are “ folds and faults,” shocks and tremors will occur whenever the level of the ocean bed is displaced in that vicinity. In all probability, Sir E. David thinks, the recurrence of these shocks is indirectly due to the gravitational “ pull ” of sun and moon acting in conjunction upon earth masses, and atmospheric pressure probably helps.. But the displacement of strata to the extent of even an inch or a fraction thereof would be enough to cause a serious earthquake, and Gunning is lucky, so far, to have got off lightly.

rjMIE INTERNATIONAL interest taken in the England v. Australia Test matches is well illustrated by the arrangements to supply the world’s Press with reports of the play. Writing to a New Zealand friend a prominent Canadian Pressman said that the newspapers there were carrying in full everything that Reuter’s laid down in London. This in turn was delivered to the Associated Press in New York, and they sent it in full to their South American service, particularly Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, “ where the many Englishmen are, of course, cricket mad!”