TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9238, 16 October 1895, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

It turns out that after all Commercial for ways that are dark and Immorality for tricks that are vain the in Heatben Chinee is not Japan. peculiar, for the enlightened Japanese ia cast in the same mould. To the nataral inborn craftiness of the Oriental he has added the methods of the •• smart" business men of the West, and tha result of the combination ia likely

to be disastrous to the unwary European trader who imagines that he is dealing with an honest man, An English firm, who appear to have been under this delusion, recently paid rather severely for their ignorance. They received an order for a quantity of yarn from a Yokohama merchaat, who is also a politician of some importance. Subsequently he asked that the label on the yarn should be of a different colour to that usually employed, and this was agreed to. The goods, however, happened to be delivered when the market was unfavourable, and the Japanese merchant declined to receive them on the ground that the label was not the same as the one they usually bore, ignoring the fact that the change had been made at his own request. Negotiations were fruitless and the English firm at length took the case to the Japanese Courta, where they obtained a verdict for 29,000 yen, the amount, claimed tor. But the merchant had another card to play. As a member of the Yarn Dealers' Guild, he called a meeting of tbat body and it was decided that unless the English firm made a reduction of 3£ yen (lls8d) per bale, besides paying expenses, the merchants of the three principal cities would boycott them. To avoid what would have meant practical ruin, tho English Company acceded to the outrageous demand. What makes the matter more extraordinary still is that though the action of the Japanese merchant and hia supporters amounted to a conspiracy to defeat the decision of the Law Courts, and though the Guild to which they belong is licensed by the Japanese Government, the authorities declared their inability to interfere. Such action must inevitably seriously affect the trade relations existing between European and Japanese firms, to the ultimate detriment of the latter, but this is poor consolation to the Company which was victimised in so shameless a manner.

In a paper on New Zealand The fisheries, recently read Sea Fisheries before the Otago Insbiof tute, Mr G. M. Thomson New Zealand discussed ab considerable length the desirability of enriching the aea fisheries of the colony by the introduction of the British cod, turbot, and herring. At first sight this would appear a far more difficult task than waa the introduction of trout; bub Mr Thomson made light of the obstacles in a most encouraging manner. The cod spawns in Scottish waters chiefly in March, and its eggs, which float to the surface, remain there uotil they hatch out, which takes place in a fortnight when the water is at a temperature of about 20deg. Fahrenheit, the process being retarded if ib is colder. It would, Mr Thomson thought, be a simple matter to obtain eggs during the spawning months and despatch them to this colony by direct steamer in hatching boxes supplied with a steady stream of water, sufficiently cold to retard the hatching for several weeks. Such eggs would reach here in May, and would have to be dealt with at once. The hatching of cod is now carried out on an enormous scale in Newfoundland, New England and Norway, and in a smaller way at the Dunbar hatchery in Scotland, and the mortality among the young fry is very small. Herrings have also beeu most successfully hatched in Scotland. An attempt was made in 1886 to introduce herring ova iuto thi3 colony, but it unfortunately failed. Ripe fish were obtained from the fishing boats in oue of the most famous herring fisheries iv Scottish waters, and the ova, stripped from them, were collected in boxes and put on board the Ruapehu. Arrangements had been made to keep the ova constantly Bupplisd during the voyago with cold sea water, but the water pipes, instead of being Bent through coolers filled with ice, were passed through the ship's refrigerator, with the result that the water in them was frozen, and all the ova died before Madeira was reached. Mr Thomson had no records as to the artificial hatching of turbot, but he anticipated no difficulty in obtaining ova and bringing it out here, and Dr. Fulton, an English authority whom he had consulted, expressed the same opinion with regard to crabs, which have been kepi*- in confinement for months at Dunbar. Ib would, of course, be better to bring out adult fish in tanks, if that wero possible, bub Dr. Fulton thought that except in the case of flatfish, the carrying out of such a project would be attended with diffi-ulty and risk, and with proper care and precautions there appeared no reason why the ova should not be safely transported and hatched out.

Only half the work of estabThe lishing the fish in New ZeaTreatment land waters, and perhaps not of that amount, would be done The Ova. when the ova was landed in the colony ; there would still remain the hatching-out process to be gone through, and means taken to protect tho young fry until it was able to shift. for itself. The Dunbar hatchery, to whioh allusion has already been made, consists of spawning ponds, where the ripe fish are kept until they spawn ; a hatching house, where the ova is hatched out; and a tidal pond, enclosing a small inlet of the sea, from which water is taken in stormy weather, and which also acta as a supplementary spawning pond. The total cost of erecting and fitting up such a hatching station in Zealand would cost, Mr Thomson estimated, £650. The most suitable site for such a station would be, ho thought, just within the entrance of Purakanui Inlet or Otago Harbour, because tbe general drift of the ocean current outside Otago Heads being in a northerly direction the fry of the fish hatched out would be carried along the whole coast line up to Cook Strait. As to the advisableness of undertaking ab the present time the work of introducing these sea fishes Mr Thomson was very emphatic. "The development of trade with Australia, which may be looked for by tbe opening of ports like Sydney and Melbourne, will inevitably lead," he said, "to a demand for fish from New Zealand, these being already considered as generally superior to the fisb found on the Australian coasts. In a very few years it ia probable that brown trout, and to a less extent salmon trout, will be extensively taken as sea fish, as great shoals of these fine fish are now becoming common along the coast of Otago and Canterbury. And if to these could be added the three finest food fishes of Britain—the cod, the turbot, and the herring—the fisheries of New Zealand wonld rank among the most valuable assets of the colony." A more local advantage to be gained would be the possession of a biologic _I station, which would be of great practical value and scientific importance. The Institute, be thought, would do well to devote some of its accumulated funds to an undertaking which would be of colonial importance, and would also prove a valuable adjunct to the University.

The arrest of a chemist A named Holmes on a charge of Modern murdering no less than eleven Bluebeard, people, and tbe strange discoveries which have since been made at hia house by the police, have given the Chicago people something to talk about. Holmes lived in a large house and took in boarders, and it was the mysterious disappearance of several of his lodgers which first aroused suspicion. Tbe building

was discovered by the police to be planned and fitted with remarkable completeness with the view of enabling murders to be carried out scientifically and the bodies of the victims to be safely disposed of. Among3t the rooms were secret closets cased with steel and asbestos, and without light or air, a hanging room to which entrance could only be had by a trap door in the floor above, and from which there was no exit but a shoot leading to the cellar. The second floor was a labyrinth of mazes, doors, and passages. It opened through one roomonlhedeat_ahaft,by which bodies could be lowered into the cellar, and from which a hidden passage led to the sealed chamber. The cellar, where large quantities of human remains have been discovered, contained every provision for destroying bodies, including an apparatus for their cremation. Two large vaults of quicklime, one of them containing some human bones, were found beneath the floor, and bones of all kinds have been turned up by the police in the course of their explorationsA hidden tank was also found, which contained what is described as a deadly oil and this exploded when it was dug up, three of the workmen being | nearly killed. The print of a woman's foot in the quicklime is supposed to have been made by Holmes's secretary, a young girl, whose sudden disappearancs had been noted with suspicion. The course of American justice is notoriously slow but it will surely hasten its progress when it is called upon to deal with this monster, whose deeds have eclipsed those of Deeming.