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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 22, 2 June 1906, Page 43

Professor William Stirling has been enlightening his audience at the British Royal Institution on the subject of the comparative value of certain beverages as stimulants to the brain. Tea, coffee, and cocoa, it appears, are “intellectual” drinks; alcohol—in all its various forms -—is merely a paraletie. When the champagne circulates at a dinner party, and the strings of men’s • tongues are loosed,as if bjr magic, the real truth is that the guests have all been smitten with sudden paralysis of the inhibitory nerve centres which preserve the habitual dignity of the first-class seasonticket holder behind his morning paper. We are. not .sure, says the “Pall Mall Gazette,” however, whether an occasional stroke of this mild paralysis is not a good thing for mankind in general; it is possible,- to be too intellectual. The. House of Commons, for instance, is a much more-entertaining place when the Irish party are grievously sick of palsy '(Hi , tlip : ProfessOr’fl sense) than it is when every member is in a state of abjebt'sobriety and consequent intense in-teWeetuM-activity. ...-