POWERS OF THE SUN

Hokitika Guardian, 27 June 1931, Page 2

POWERS OF THE SUN

UNDAUNTED SIR TRUBY „ KINC. , HUNT FOR QUOTATION. It was characteristic of the determination and thoroughness of Sir Truby King that, failing to obtain in Christchurch a passage he wished to quote to members of the Sunlight League, he should telegraph to the Parliamentary Library in Wellington asking that the entire passage should lie telegraphed urgently back to him as that he should have had, stored away in his mind, .striking words read by him some 10 years ago, and eminently applicable to.such an occasion as :i meeting of the Sunshine League. The passage Sir Truby wished to quote was from a work published in 1863: “The Alode of Motion.” by Professor Tyndall, and contained in the first edition only. It was not to be had in the three libraries in Christchurch which might have been expected to produce it. Hut Sir Truby was undaunted: recalling extracts from the passage, lie telegraphed to the Parliamentary librarian asking that the whole quotation should be looked up and put on the wires urgently, authorising the expenditure of up to £lO from his own pocket. The Sunlight League should have that quotation at nil costs—and it did. Sir Trilby was late for the meeting, but wfien the Hon. Sir R, Heaton Rhodes M.L.C., said at the conclusion of his address that it had been well worth waiting for, there was general and spontaneous applause. The following was the quotation : “Leaving out of account the eruptions of volcanoes and the ebb and flow of the tides, every mechanic..l ; e i n on the surface of the earth, every manifestation of power, organic or inorganic, vital or physical, is produced by the sun His warmth keeps the s:a.s liquid and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms that agitate both are blown by the mechanical forces of tlie sun. He lifts the rivers and glaciers up the mountains, and thus the cataract and the avalanche shoot with an energy derived immediately from him. ITmnder and. lightning are also his'transmuted power. Every fil-e tnat burns and every flame that glows dispenses lieht and heat which originally belonged to the sun. Tri thes days, unhappily, the news of battle is familiar to us. Every shot and every charge is an application or misapplication of the mechanical force of the sun. He blows the trumpet ; he urges the projectile ; ha bursts the bomb and remember this is not poetry, but rigid mechanical truth. “He rears, as I have said, the whole vegetable world, and through it the animal ; the lilies of the field are his work ; the verdue of the meadows and the cattle upon a thousand hills; lie forms the mnscl *, lie mures the bloo if he. builds the brain. His fleetness is in the lion’s font; iiis spring is in the panther: he soars in the eagle, he slides in the snake. He builds the forest, and hews it down; the power which raised the tree and which weilds the axe being one and the same. The clov. er sprouts and blossoms; and the scythe of the mower swings by the operation of the same force.

“The sun digs the ore from our mines; hefrolls the iron, he rivets the plates; he boils the water; he draws tire train. He not only grows the coct- n, but he spins the fibre and weaves the web. There is not a hammer raised, a wheel turned, or a shuttle thrown that is not raised: and turned and thrown by the sun. His energy is poured freely into space; but our world is a halting place where this energy is conditioned. Here the Protens works his spells; the selfsame essence takes a million shapes and hues, and finally dissolves into its primitive and almost formless form. “The sun comes to ns as heat; he quits us as heat—and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear; they are all special forms of solar power—the moulds into which his strength is temporarily poured in passing from its source through indefinitude.”