Yarieties.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 441, 29 September 1904, Page 2

Yarieties.

THE JAPANESE 'H.M.S.' AND 'S.S.' |J|I|HE observant leader will have noted s!&{** *^ a * a * *k o 83d of the name of nearly every Japanese ship occurs either the termination kan or roaru, and he may have been puzzled to know what they meant. For all practical pur. poses they have crma to be the equivalents of our 'H.M.S.' and «S,S„' and, in accordance with Japanese usage, come after instead of before the title of the vessel, 'Kan' is a Chinese word, meaning ' war vßEsa],' and is attached only to the ships of the Emperor's fleet} 'mam' literally means 'round,' and even a Japanese cannot tell you how it came to be applied to merchant! vessels. SEEDS AS BULWABKS. A singular discaveiy h?,a been made in connection with the Suez Canal. The company has found that the fringe of reeds which" grow hese and there on the African side of the canal below Ismaiiia forms a better protection for the banks ifcan the courses of expensive punburned brick or sandstone in use elsewhere. An attempt has been made to grow them, but the difficulty has been found that the reeds, though they will afterwards adapt thtmaalvea and flouvieh in salt water, must be originally grown in freeh water, and of that there is none on the Asian shore of the cutting from end to end. THE TITLES OF NOVELS, Mios Florence Warden is already sresponsible for something over fifty novels, and returns with undiminished vigor to the field of her popular successes. Her latest book invites curiosity on the threshold by its title, 'What Ought She to Dof" Anthony.. Trollopa was fond of asking theeo conundrums; as witness 'Can you Forgive"Hor?' and 'ls he PopeßjoyP' One remembers a novo! that was popular two decades and more sliice with the prim Btyle, * Ought We to Visit Her?' which wae surely sufficient; to explain the popularity. Indeed, juat at the present time, the study of titles will repay the philosophic mind. Mr Fisher Unwin announces a new novel, the name of which spells a small sen men in itself—'He that had Beceived the Five Talents,' Sir Walter Besaat with equal awkwardness dabbed

one of his books «The World Went Very Well Then/ Most writers have a leaning to concise, brief titles with a snap in them, so to speak, but there are exceptions. There was 'The Gods,' 'Some Mortals' and ' Lord Wickenham.' And Mdme Albanesi, having christened her recent entertaining novel 'Susannah and One Elder,' haß been forced oy moral auasion to change the name to 'Susannah and One Other,' which seems on the whole weak, AND ASTRONOMY. The earliest astronomical phenomenon recorded ia the annals of the Chinese is a conjunction of five planets in the reign of the Emperor Tohuen-hia, which lasted from .2514 B.C. to 2636 B.C. This is 'looking backward' with a vengeance, and one begins to appreciate the insignificance ef a mere century in contemplating the very ancient history of the Chinese and other Oriental raceß. From time immemorial the Chinese have considered solar eclipses and conjunctions of the planets as prognostics of the greatest importance to the Empire, and the observation of these has been made a matter of State policy. Judicial astrology was also practised by the Chaldeans, and there can be little doubt that to a superstition, vain and sidiculous in itself, we owe the early observations of celestial phenomena in China and Babylon; the zaal with which the Arabs embraced the teachings of Ptolemy, and the revival and development of astronomy ia modern Europe, THE RUSSIAN COMMISSARIAT. The Russians have taken the most remarkable secret precautions for the provisioning of their troops, according to the London ' Daily Chronicle.' At intervals of about a quarter of a mile along the greater part of the entire length of the Siberian railway stores of concentrated proteid food have been buried on each side of the line; each deposit being enough to maintain a company—said to be 290 men —for a week. The poeition of these provisions is not known to the sergeants or captains, but only to the commandants, who have the information in cipher. They are under the strictest orders to resort to these supplies only when it is absolutely unavoidable, but several considerations show how necessary is this long since taken precaution, The Russian soldier, for instance, needs more food than the Jap, simply because he has a much greater body weight to sustain; for, other things being equal, there is a necessary proportion between and the amount of food aece||*ajry to sustain it. On the other hand, itire well known that the Japanese soldier can do hard work on even less food than his small size would lead one to expect. A SCHEME TO LIVE UNDERGROUND Mr William Parsons, chief engineer of the new rapid transit subway in New York City, which is to be opened shortly, predicts the need of an additional subway in New "Xork every four years, and says that all the principal streets should have tunnels under them. Sky-scraper buildings, he says, could then be sunk as many storeys underground as they rise above, and the subways would admirably serve them, - FOREIGN WORDS. In 'Munsey's Magazine' there is an article on the Development of the English Language, by Mr Brander Matthews, Professor of English Litarature in Columbia University. In this article Mr Matthews contends for vthe simplification of the language* With legard to the use of foreign words,* he says ;—• When we are tempted to use a foreign word we ought to consider whether our exact meaning cannot be conveyed better by an English word, Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand we can find an English word—or, at least, a way of conveying our meaning in English—more satisf&csory to the overwhelming majority of those who read English only. They write 'cloture' when 'closure' is ready for use, and when the French 'cloturo' is, after all, what we Americans know as 'the previous question.' Why write 'employe' when there is 'employee' formed logically and ready to be set over against employer? Our British cousins are worse sinners in this respect than we Americans are. They give a French pronunciation to 'trait' and 'oharide' and 'hotel,' «ven going so far as to write 'an hotel,' because the 'h* is silent in ifrench. This seems illogical, for if 'trait' and 'charade' and 'hotel* are words needed in on; language there is no reason why they should not be accepted frankly as English, and therefore pronounced as English.' Our language is hospitable, says Mr Matthews, refreshing its vocabulary from ail sources; and there is no good reason why we should refuse to make use of a word as thoroughly established in English as ' preface,' as those do who insist on preferring to it the rather pedantic 'foreword.'