TOPICS of the WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XIII, 24 September 1898, Page 300

TOPICS of the WEEK.

THE TERRIBLE KUMI. OUR New Zealand bush has been invested with a new interest, and in some minds with a dread terror perhaps, by the story of the discovery of the Ku mi in the bush some fifty miles from Gisborne. which has been circulated throug-hout the length and breadth of the colony. It was only the other day that our little scientific world here was greatly excited over the capture of a Notornis, that peculiarly rara avis; but the discovery of the Kami, if it proves to have been discovered, is an event calculated to excite not merely naturalists, but every ma n. woman and chi hl in the community. For the Ku,mi stands in quite a different category to the Notornis. I'he latter is after all but a bit of a bird, and besides the one recently taken down South there are two other spwimens of the family in European museums. But the Kumi is a cold, clammy saurian monster that has never been seen alive or dead by anyone now living. Of his appearance and habits we know nothing, except what ♦he Maoris were told by their great gra ml fathers, who-, it seems, had met 1 he Kumi. though they never cultivated very intimate relations with him. And little does one wonder at their unneighbourly attitude. The Kumi was not an animal to make friends with. According to the Maoris, he was like a huge lizard.

with four legs, lie had a great head like a bull-dog. and jaws filled with curved teeth, ami a. body twelve fret long. Ih* c ould climb tires, ami. ugh! hr used to lir in wait mi th<* bramdic:* till his victims passed Iwlow. The Moa and hr were great chums; in fact.

the Maori idea was that he used to protect his feathered friend; and so when the moa disappeared the Kumi, having, so to speak, no more object in life, was supfiosed to have become extinct also. It may turn out, however, that he has only been lying low all these generations. At present his existence hangs chiefly on the word of a bush-feller of Arowhana, who says he saw a strange animal answering the Maori description of the Kumi run into a hole in a rata tree. Other bushfellers who were summoned at once by the discoverer, allege that they could trace footprints of an altogether unknown appearance to the hole, and round the tree they could see the track worn by the claws of the creature. 1 confess the chain of evidence is not of the strongest. We are all aware that it is on record that scores of bush men and men not connected with the bush have seen snakes in this colony, while, as a fact, we are entirely free from such vermin. But still the evidence is almost as good as that on which the great sea serj>ent. has established a strong sentiment in favour of his existence, and a good d'ea.l letter than that on which some friends of the Taniwha attempted to gain for him a standing in the colony. If not enough to ma.ke us actually believe that the Kun i is still with us, that bushman’s story will be quite sufficient to give us the creeps next time we hear a strange sound when we are benighted in the bush. Further, it will be something to frighten our disobedient children with; and. better still, to startle the girls nt bush picnics. The vague terrors that may l>e evolved out of that little story, the. stimulus to imagination it can afford and the provender for hungry nightmares make the incident of the discovery of the Kumi—whether it really Ixdongs to the category of discoveries or onily to that of inventions —a va.luable, addition to that stock of half beliefs on which to a large extent we depend for a living. When all that science and scepticism can suggest has been said, it still does not follow that such an animal as the Kumi does not exist in New Zealand. I own it is strange that no one has come across him till now. and I don’t regard the fact that the Government has recently taken under its protection the Tautara —that distant relation of the Kumi—as explanatory of the latter's re-ap-peia.rancei. That would Ijpitoken a range of intelligence and a knowledge of the world generally which is not to be looked for even in a saurian that sat at the feet of the Moa and called that giant Dinornis friend. But in a new country like this there must surelv lx* a few surprises in store for us yet. 1 nourish a hope that some one may come across the. Moa some day.

THE ACME OF STATE PATERNALISM. THE legislators of France, face to face with the problem, of how to arrest the decline in population which means an annual loss to the country of 20,000 persons, have lighted on a new device. Hitherto they have been endeavouring to popularise marriage by taxing the bachelors, and encouraging large families by giving ‘special inducements’ to the fathers and mothers of such. But all these schemes have had only a very moderate success, and now the Government, despairing of being able to appreciably increase the number of its babies. has determined to take special care of the ones it has. Every one is familiar with the fact that the rate of infant mortality is enormously larger than that which prevails among adults. For instance, even in healthy New Zealand, which boasts of the lowest death rate in the world, the number of children who die before they reach live years is twelve times larger than the number of those who die between live and ten, and three and a half times as big as the number of those who die between thirty and forty or for-y and fifty. Bearing this general fact in view the Government of France has (Missed a- law embodying a number of regulations for the care and upbringing of tender infants. One provision of this measure forbids anyone to give solid food of any kind to babies under one year without the written authority of a qualified physician; and another prohibits the use of long rubber tubes to feeding* bottles. because of the difficulty of keeping them sterilised. 1 have always thought that the lot of babies in almost any <’ountry was a truly enviable one, and if I had lieen consulted as t<» my choice, I think 1 would Lave

preferred to remain in long' clothes all my life with a bottle and a ‘pram’- - the admired of all admirers—in preference to growing up through a disappointing childhood and a thwarted boyhood to man’s weary estate. But in France under this new arrangement the condition of babydom is something infinitely superior to anything any of us have ever experienced. These little crumbs of humanity, so to speak, which we by our very excess of kindness and general ignorance suffer to fall from our tables, France proposes to economically garner. She has to be thrifty with her population in these days has France, and hence she means to save the scraps. One smiles at such care as is betokened in the provisions against solid food and long tubed feeding bottles, but the day may come when we shall not despise such devices. Statistics tell us the birth nite of the colony is decreasing, and with a diminished production of babies the value of the output must be increased. What a charming outlook for posterity! The baby of to-day is doubtless dear enough to his immediate progenitors and relations, but the baby of the future will be a. national treasure. Yes, instead of being as he now is. the terror of most people outside his own family circle, the butt of current humour, the aversion of bachelors, he will rank as the most precious of our national possessions.

‘SING, BOYS, SING.’ MU MUI It. of the Auckland Education Board, will not improbably achieve for a time a more enviable fate than Lemuel’s mother assigned to the virtuous woman in the last chapter of Proverbs. Not only will his own children arise up and call him blessed, but the whole children of the colony must feel inclined to bless and magnify his name. For it is to Mr Muir that they largely owe various suggestions calculated to lessen the burden of school life. Mr Muir recently advocated the abolition of the individual examination system.—a glorious reform 1 fancy in the eyes of every schoolboy and schoolgirl, and the. Chief Inspector, though he would not go so far as that, went to lengths that completely upset all the pupilary preconceptions of that august embodiment of pedagogic omnipotence. lie said that the scholars were overloaded with work. He virtually conceded the truth of three-fourths of that rhyme, from which I remember 1 used to draw some solace, which begins by declaring that multiplication is a vexation, and ends by attributing the increase in juvenile insanity to the teaching <-f fractions. What precisely is likely to come out of all this no one can pretend to foresee, but 1 am inclined to

regard it as a premonition of the total upheaval of our present educational system, which is largely made up of cram and sham. I understand that in the schools some sense of a change is dimly felt, and warmly welcomed, but from what I hear our young friends are scarcely well informed on tlie matter. There is a growing conviction in some school circles that the school syllabus is to be enormously cut down, corporal punishment entirely alioiished, holidays largely extended, and altogether a sort of millennium, in which the lion of a schoolmaster will lie down peacefully with the lamb of a pupil, is to dawn over the school world. Now these are visionary ho|ws which one cannot encourage. 1 can assure my voting readers that there is no tound:.tion

foi their entertaining such quixotic dreams. Mr Muir and the Chief inspector, though evidently mueli more like the school master in Beu Bolt, than the traditional dominie, scarcely contemplate a revolution of that kind: and what they do contemplate must certainly prove a disappointment to all who are expecting the millennium. For even their ideas on the subject of education, liberal and enlightened men as they are, must still be somewhat behind the schoolboy’s ideas. They still believe that it is necessary that youth should be taught something—antiquated delusion though it may be—and if they counsel contracting the area of study it is only that what is taught may be taught more thoroughly. At the' risk of depriving them of their present popularity, I must unmask their real purposes. That confluence of pedagogic and pupilary opinion which is the vain dream of boyhood, may never happen. Tn the nature of tilings they are as opposed as the ]>oles.

THE TRANSMIGRATIONS OF LI. POOR old Li Hung ('hang! This partition of China business seems coming very near a partition of him too. The other day he was Viceroy of China, but thanks to British influence lie lias now been dismissed from that high altitude. Apparently, however, he has the powerful friendship of Russia on his side, and the Muscovite is doing all lie ean to get Li back into his old post, and may succeed. All the same, the uncertainty of things in this mutable world must, have been borne home on the great Chinaman with painful force, in the last year or so. Before the foreign devils took it into their beads to worry over China, the position of Li Hung (’hang must have partaken in a fair degree of that steadfast conservative character which belongs to most things in the Flowery Land. Through his own talents and by taking advantage of that colossal system of legalised plunder and bri-

bery which prevails in his country, the A iceroy had gathered to himself no inconsiderable amount, of gear. Some say lie is the richest man in the world. However that may be, he is certainly rich, and he doubtless looked forward to enjoying his wealth in his declining years after the most approved fashion of his nice. But Fate in the shape of the foreign devils has intervened, and now he finds himself little more than a football—a costly one, no doubt, but still a football—for the Powers to kick. To say the least of it, the role of a football is not a very dignified one, and it must be particularly humiliating, one would say, to a Mandarin of the first degree*, who has been decorated with peacock feathers and crimson dragons, to have perforce to till tin* bill. Of course, the moral of Li Hung Chang’s story is obvious, and is applicable to both Celestials and Christians alike. One consideration it suggests to obscure |M*ople like you and me is that after all we may not have the worst of the bargain.' The career of such men as Li Hung or even Bun Tuck is not by any means all beer and skittles.

THE SUGAR OF LIFE. WHEN Professor Schenk. of Vienna, announced some time ago that he had discovered the secret of sex genesis and could regulate the proportion of boy babies to girl babies with absolute nicety, the world held up its hands half in amazement at the claims of science, and half in incredulity at them. But being a particularly modest and delicately-mind-ed world, it did not care to press the Professor to reveal his secret. The latest, mail news from Europe, however, informs us that of his own aceord the savant has made a clean breast, of the whole thing, and it turns out to be nothing so very new after all. The great, determinative factor in sex is sugar; simply sugar and nothing more. It is precisely as we were taught in the nursery rhyme, showing how wonderfully infallible are our primal instincts. Don't you remember how we used to answer that, half conundrum of our infantile days, ‘What are little girls made of?’ The answer was, ‘Sugar'and spice ami all things nice.’ And science after years of study has at length come to corroborate that spontaneous dictum. Literally little girls are, according to the professor, composed of these ingredients; little boys on the contrary are made of sterner stuff. So, my dear young lady, when you are dissatisfied with your feminine lot and wish you were a man like your brother, remember that it was your mother's sweet tooth that placed you under such disadvantages. Sugar was your bane. Fate in the shape of saccharine condemned you to a kirtle. Well may you look on the sugar basin with aversion, and regard lolirtF shops as a snare and delusion, for it was these that wrought your ruin. What a wide field of speculation and inquiry does the Professor’s statement open up. Fathers with large families of girls may naturally enough condemn the sugar-eating propensities of the age, but how can the young men look otherwise than kindly on a practice that has surrounded them with such bevies of charming' young ladies and raised their own value in the social mart. Viewed in the light of Professor Schenk’s discovery the candy-man becomes a beneficent personage, and a new interest invests the olive features of the Persian lollie vendor. But for thee, oh humble purveyor of succulent dainties, in which elements even more foreign than the products of Persia may play, a part —but for thee and thy friendly persuaviness, my sweet Amaryllis might have been a mere whipster of a boy and I be wandering through the world searching in vain for that kindred soul which, thanks to sugar, 1 have found.

THE PAPER MAN. SIR HERBERT KITCHENER has deerreed that no newspaper correspondent shall accompany him on his march from Khartoum to Fashoda; the reason for this prohibition, assigned by those who know the Sirdar, being that he finds the newspaper men sometimes interfere with the complete success of his plans. He is reported to have declared that he does not object to the correspondent on the actual field of battle, but the latter's inquisitiveness and all-consum-ing desire to satisfy the inquisitiveness of the great public whom he serves may sometimes upset the most delicately laid scheme by revealing it to the enemy. I don’t deny a certain apjienraiice of reason in this, but there is another side to the matter. What, one would like to know, would modern war be without, the newspaper correspondent? What would the Sirdar himself be—modern Alexander as he now appears— if there were no sacer votes in his camp in the shape of the newspaper scribe to sing his doughty deeds? lip to the present the Egyptian campaign has been a brilliant affair. But so far as the great world is concerned who made it so? Was it the Sirdar and his men? Hardly. They disappeared into the desert, and we might have heard nothing of them till they reappeared again had it not been that the newspaper correspondent accompanied them and daily wrote down all they ‘fought, and feared and felt..’ Practically, it. was his pen. not their swords, that made the campaign what, it was so far as the public is concerned. Take as another instance the recent American war. What a

very tame tiffair it must have been for us had there been no newspapers and no newspaper correspondents. To those that immediately took part in an engagement the campaign, of course, had its realities, especially if

they got. shot. But how were we to realise what took place had there been no one on the scene to observe on our behalf and to relate the events. The Americans now will not forget that war for hundreds of years to come; and the memory of it will stimulate patriot passion when the grandsons of those who fought have been gathered to their fathers. Would it. have been so memorable, would it have inspired such national zeal, do you think, had the story of it never been told in the daily prints by eyewitnesses, who were there not to fight but look on? Of course not; and I cannot but feel a little surprise that the Sirdar has not. recognised this side to the question. Even in the sphere of Parliamentary warfare the value of the newspaper correspondent is well known. How often have I seen a member in the course of his speech stop and glance anxiously up to mark not. whether his brother members were listening, but. whether the Press gallery was noting' his words. Was it not appreciation of the invaluable services of the newspaper correspondent that led the Chairman of Committee on that, recent memorable occasion when all the galleries were cleared to refuse to make the order apply to the ladies’ gallery? Mr Guinness explained his action on the ground that according to Parliamentary usage he was not supposed to be cognizant of the existence of the ladies' gallery, or its occupants. Some think that after all this was a mere excuse and that a delicate gallantry really prevailed with him. Love is blind, and may not courtesy be too? But in my opinion the correct explanation of the matter is that there was a lady newspaper correspondent, in the gallery—and she was really the only, newspaper correspondent 'in the House. Her profession, therefore, and not her sex, saved her.

The alleged discovery of the Kumi near g isbarne .

"attributes ttic increase <n juVenife "to the teaching o£ fraction '

the Career of Such men al Li Hung ««• eYen T3v«n Tuck tv not* <xll brer an 4 skittles

"he does not object fo tie corrcsjsondent on tie aethat of baff/e (There i» rJwayj the eha-nce of T/ieir being- killed, offearlj m-the engagement)