CULLED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18709, 13 February 1923, Page 6

CULLED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES

Walker, the famous clown, relates the following story in his book “From Sawdust to Windsor Castle," just published:—“ln the March following I returned to America. I went, down to princess pier and boarded the boat with everyone wishing me bon voyage. It occurred to me I’d do something funny to mark the occasion, so I went down to my stateroom, opened the porthole. and squeezed my head through it, making grimaces at my friends as the steamer was just going out of the Mersey. To my horror I could not get my head back. I don’t know exactly what I thought, but among other things, was that I might have to die with my head through the porthole: Perhaps the boat would have to be cut in half to get my head out. I shouted, the bedrCMm steward arrived, and with a spoon he got my ears down, and some how I squeezed myself back to the world.

Mr. Frederick Wilkins, landlord of tlhn Tow Tree, a village inn at Burghill, in the lovely lands of pastoral Hereford, renowned as a man of a strange oath, and bearded like the pard. may now go to the barber again. Sixteen years ago Mr. Wilkins. a stanch Conservative, was distressed by the election of a Liberal Government. He swore that he would never suffer his hair to be cut or his beard to be trimmed until the Conservatives again ruled in the land. He made a wager to back his oaths. His hair and beard have grown for sixteen years. His waistcoat is wholly obscured by his beard. His hair is held up by hairpins. He is nearly seventy years old. and looks like a patriarch who might have governed some ancient tribe of nomads. Mr. Bonar Law and the Conservative victors in the general election have freed him of his hair fetters. He is at liberty to rid himself free of his locks that have made his thraldom these sixteen years. Mr. Wilkins has not yeit decided how or to what extent he will submit his head and chin to the barber. Mr. Wilkins is a great patriot. He served in the Life Guards and the Worcestershire Yeomanry as a young man. His five sons marched to fight against the Germans, and two of them were killed in action.

Dr. C. Everett Field, of the Radium Institute. New York. thinks another decade will witness human life being vastly prolonged as a matter of course by ’he use of radium. He says: “We have ascertained beyond question that potassium salts are slightly radio-active, and that radium can be substituted for them with a degree of success. It was Dr. Zwaardemake, physiologist of the University of Utrecht, who first discovered, a number of years ago, that radium could do in the blood stream what potassium sajts do in the normal person. He took an animal’s heart, which was kept beating outside the animal, and removed the potassium element. It was not longer possible then to keep it in action. Then he substituted a radium solution and it was possible to restore action." Dr Field said it had hc-n discovered that the systems of persons who are victims of cancer and certain other wasting maladies were deficient in potassium salts, and that as their svstems were made to assimilate potassium a tonic effect was immediately noticeable.

James Lebrasca and his wife, nineteen, have a new bom baby pitiful deformed, without legs or arms. The father, indigant at the suggestion that his child should be deprived of life, says:—“Let Providence decide what shall become ct t’ e baby it created." "Thou shalt not kill" is the commandment. Life as it comes must stay. Those suffering extreme agony ask in vain for death. The most hideous deformed, including those idiotic at birth, must go all the way through. But as it just (asks the "American”) to drag "Providence” into our miserable ■ problem? What would be your idea of a Providence, possessing omnipot ence and omniscence, (hat would create a child without arms or legs? It can’t be to punish a child, just made, that has done nothing wrong, it certainly could not be to punish the parents, for the vilest fiend over invented by man’s unhealthy imagination could hard’y be capable of that crime against innocence.

Synthetic camphor, made by n newly developed process, is expected to produce a vast amount of camphor for commercial purposes from the immense turpentine forests of the United States. For more than four years Professor R J. Moore. 8.5., M.A.. formerly of Columbia University, and now a director of a chemical refining syndicate in ■ Brooklyn, has heen working on this discovery. Professor Moore explains that nearly all the camphor in the United States at present is imported from Japan, and is used in the manufacture of films for motion pictures, billiard balls, and in the celluloid industry for the manufacture of brushes, combs. &c, CamIphor is also used in the manufacture jof piano keys, patent leather. “Parisian ivory." and many hindered articles. The ordinary camphor is (Procured from a tree which has to reach the age of 30 years before it can be utilised. To secure the camphor. the tree is cut down and reduced to pulp. When manufacturers in the United States were not getting enough camphor from Japan for their requrements. they appealed to the Japanese Government. Japan is now using much more camphor than ever before because of Ihe progress of its film industry. Professor Moore became interested in the manufacture of synthetic camphor from American turpentine because of this situation. Turpentine -is treated with certain chemicals and brought from one stage to another, until finally camphor is produced. There is practically unlimited source of supply ot turpentine in the United States, most of which comes from the long leaf pine of the south, the annual production reaching 25,000, 000 gallons. The chemicals used in this synthetic process are easily oh tained at a very low cost.