TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8122, 18 April 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The exhumation of human remains in New South Wales, foi various purposes, is carried on to a far greater extent than most people imagine, upwards of 200 annually being taken from one grave or cemetery to another. Sometimes it happens tbnt a person has been buried in the wrong grave, and occasionally the relatives, after the iutermeut has taken place, desire to remove the body to a different portion of the same cemetery, or to another bnrin] ground. Too control of this matter has now been transferred to the Department of Public Health, and to deal uniformly and effective ly with tho matter a comprehensive set of regulations has been publsherJ.

Mr J. Pedorsen, lately of the staff of the Dairy Division of the Department of Agriculture, who left last year for tho Argentine, writing from Buonos Ayres to a friend in Wellington, says—Some people in New Zealand have the idea that they can got land for next to nothing out here, but J can tell you land is getting very dear now. Of course, there is land here you can get for 2a Gd per acre, but .if is so far away from railway communication that it is not worth having. Dairying is conducted on a very old style. Neatly all the factories are situated in tho city, and some of them receive cream from estanoieros two hundred miles away, and it generally takes two days before it arrives here. It is not so easy to alter this system, so it will take a good number of years before this country will be able to aotively compete with New Zealand in the butter line. Farming here is done ou a much larger scale than in New Zealand, and unless a man has got at least £IO,OOO be has not got much chance of Bucoess.

Professor Minobin haa returned to London from Uganda, where he has been searching into the cause of the deadly sleeping sickness. Armed

with butterfly nets, he and his native assistants on the shores of Lake Victoria Nyanza, caught thousands of the flies which carry the trypanesomes—the germs of infection. "I was frequently bitten, but only one fly in 1,000 is infeotious," he said to a representative of the Daily Mail. "But if the thousandth fly had bitten you?" ho asked. "Oh, I should not have come baoK. The sleeping sickness is absolutely fatal. The origin of the disease in Uganda i 9 curious. An infected native was bitten by the local flies, which developed the germs and retransmitted it to other natives. Tintil now the sleojping sickness has reached tbe proportions of a scourge in Uganda. Lieutenant Grey and Lieutenant Tulloch, of the E.A. M.C., are out there still investigating the disease. As to a euro. I must leave that to the medical men, for 1 only concern myself with the cause. I have many mouths' work before mo before 1 shall know tbe exact practical value of my mission."

In a memorandum to the UnderSecretary for Mines, tbe Government Geologist (Dr Bell) refers to the valuable collection of mineral Bpeoimens and fossil remains in the Colonial Museum. The larger examples consist chiefly of saurian reptiles from Amuri and Waipara, and some remarkable mammaon remains from North-western Otago. Dr Bell points out that these specimens, having been made famous by different authors as types of species, ara relatively few in number as compared with the smaller specimens, which run into considerably more than 100,000 individuals ' "These neglected specimens," continues Dr Bell, "have among them some of tbe finest examples of what has been collected by the Geologioal Survey during the past forty years, and of late, during the progress of my work in connection with the cataloguing and repacking of tbe survey collections, 1 have plaoed in the show oases many rare and very flue specimens that were forgotten and in danger of being lost."

An earthquake, especially a big one, is not a thing we oan imagine as likely to go a-mießintj. Yet one appears to have done so. That is to say, it cannot be located. Science, in the person of Padre Alfani, Italy's loading earthquake expert, vouches for the fact that the earthquake has occurred. Anyhow, his delicate instruments at Florence Observatory, which record all earth movements, worked longer and harder on Thursday, February Bth, than they have ever done before. The mioroseismograph, as the little machine is somewhat largely named, rattled away for four hours', dotting down signs indicating that a terrible earthquake was in progress some Ave thousand miles away. The only thing tbe machine oouldn't do was! to eay where the catastrophe was. On that night, however, no news came to hand of any terrible visitation. The following day was equally reassuring in its silence. But the padre vehemently asserts that his instruments do not lie, that an earthquake of an unusually frightful character has taken place some where. Where? is tne. question. The only sign of anything being wrong came to hand on February 9tb, when it was announced that oable communication between Jamaica and Puerto Rico was out off. This, however, may be only coincidence. On February 10th there was no further hewa of the errant earthquake, though certain seismologists announced that they noticed a similar disturbance in their instruments at the time mentioned by Padro Alfani.