NEW AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 802, 22 January 1910, Page 3

NEW AND NOTES.

STANLEY AND GLADSTONE. It ha« long been known that Sir H. -vl. Stanley had no very lugli opinion ol Alt Gladstone, and iu tlio traveller’s autobiography, lately given to the world oy jLauly Stanley, there in a record ot a cunon.s interview between the two. Stanley had been warned that the statesman wanted to be instructed on one or two matters connected with tho slave trade. “1 had looked forward to the meeting with great interest,” he says, " believing—deluded tool that 1 was!—that a great politician cares to he instructed about anything but the art ol catching votes. I had brought with mo the latest political map ol East Africa, and when the time had come I spread u out conveniently 19x111 the table before the great man, at whose speaking iaeo I gazed with the eyes ol an Airiean.” " -Ur Gladstone,'’ the traveller commenced, intending to he brief ami le the point, " this is Alombassa, tho chid port ol British East Africa, it is an old city. It is mentioned iu the Lusiads, and, no doubt, has been visited by the Rha-neeiaus. It is most remarkable tor its twin harbours, iu which the whole British Navy might lie salely." it was rather a tactless opening, been use tho statesman naturally wanted to get at his points in his own way. Tbe conversation, as a matter ol tact, never ran on smooth lines. *; Pardon mo,” said Mr Gladstone, "did you say it was a harbourr'' "Yes, sir,” said Stanley; "so largo that a thousand vessels could easily be berthed in it.” There followed a long argument as to whether a natural port could he a harbour. At length Stanley had an opportunity of getting hark to Africa. He made b( ief reference to Mombassa and Uganda and then went on to talk of the country round the great lakes. Air Gladstone inquired idly concerning tho name's of two isolated mountains, "Those, sir,” Staid jy answered. " are the Gordon Bennett and the Afackiniiou Beaks.” ” Who called them by those absurd names?” he asked, with the corrugation of » Irowu on his brow. “ I called them, sir.” "By what right?” asked Gladstone. ” By the right of first

discovery, and these two gentlemen were the patrons of the expedition.’’ “ How can you say that, when Herodotus spoke of them twenty-six hundred years ago, and called them Croplii and Alophi ? It is intolerable that classic names like those should be displaced by modern names, and .Mr Gladstone, but Croplii and Alophi, if they ever existed at all, were situated over a thousand miles to the northward. Herodotus simply wrote from hearsay, and——” “Oh, I can’t stand that.” Stanley promptly offered to call the mountains Croplii and Alophi if Gladstone would assist him in the suppression of the slave trade by lending bis approval to a Hgamla railway scheme. “Flat bribery and corruption,” was the old man’s laughing reply. THE AGE OF TREES. There arc certain yews in England that were stalwart trees when CYesar landed on her shores. More than a 1 century ago Do Candolo proved to the > satisfaction of botanists that a cor--1 tain yew, standing in the churchyard at Portugal, Perthshire, was more than 2600 years old, aud he found another at Jiedoor, in Bneltus, which was 8240 years old at that time. Humboldt riders to a gigantic Boa- ; bah tree in Central Africa as one of the oldest organic monuments in the world. This tree had a trunk 2!)lt in diameter, and Adamson, by a series of careful measurements, demonstrated conclusively that it had not lived less than 1500 years—and it lives today. But even Humboldt was wrong in bis premise. It has recently been I proved that there is a tree in the New World which, of a verity, has lived to “ a green old age,” for it antedates the Scriptural flood about 2000 years. This is a cypress tree standing iu the province of Cliepultepee, .Mexico, with tt trunk 118 ft lOin in circumference. This had been shown to ho (as conclusively as those things can he shown) about 6260 years of age. Nor is this so remarkable when one stops to think that, given favourable conditions of growth and sustenance, the average tree will never die of old age. its death is merely an accident. Other younger and more vigorous trees may spring up near it, and rob its roots of their proper nourishment; insects may kill it; floods or winds may sweep it away; or the woodman’s axe may fell it. If no such accident happens to it, a tree may lion visit and grow for century upon century, and age upon age. BATTLE IN A BOTTLE.

Soon of ter the opening of the Medii'iil Kxliiliition at tin' Horticultural Hall, Westminster (says Hie Daily Mail), a large glass bottle exploded ami .seal tered its contents. a creamy ioam. Originally tin* liottlc contained milk—just milk ami a low million typhoid bacilli which lived and grow happily together in this culture-me-dium. Then, for demonstration purposes, a horde of 10,000,000 hungry monsters (known as the bacilli of Massed) wore introduced into the cultured civilisation of the unhappy typhoid tribes, and remorseless war was raging in a moment. A storm in a teacup was nothing to the battle in the bottle. The milk grew turgid with the bodies of the slain, and still the Massol militia murdered and devoured their victims. ■\Vhen a Massol bandit had filled himself to bursting point—he burst, ami each of his 800,000 or 1,000,000 fragments became a hungry young Massed baccillus which fought and ate in turn. Finally the milk foamed up with the rapidly multiplying generations of Massolites, and the bottle exploded. The demonstration arose nut of Professor .Metehnikoff’s claim that the bacillus of lactic acid (the Massol bacillus) destroys the bacilli which cause internal putrefaction of food. The Massol bacillus, he holds, by rendering the internal organs antiseptic, lengthens a man’s lifts to an extraordinary extent, and he (juotes the exceptional number of centenarians in Bulgaria, where the inhabitants live largely on soured milk, which contains this bacillus.

Massol bacilli are now presented in a novel form—that of chocolate creams, each containing 10,000,000 bacilli, and it was one of these chocolate. creams which caused such havoc among the innocent typhoid .microbes in the bottle.

HYPNOTISED INTO LAUGHTER. While the freshmen of Connecticut State College were having festivities at Williamtic (says the Hartford correspondent of the Now York American), John Bergensen, of the new class, singled out Baton White, a student with whom ho had been friendly, and said:—“l’m going to hypnotise you. You’ll have to do what 1 say.” Ho made a few passes with Ids hands; then reminded White that at a party which both had attended on the previous night White had laughed rather inordinately.

“ Laugh again, White. Show ’em how you can laugh!” Bergensen commanded.

To the. amazement of Bergenson and the othoi’s about who all thought the hypnotising was a joke. White, went into a fit of laughter. Ho laughed hysterically for an hour, when the scared students took him to the dormitory room. They tried to stop his laughter by stuffing bedclothes into his mouth, but when it was taken out lie laughed again. Early next morning the college authorities heard of the case, and President diaries L. Beach scut for Dr William L. Higgins, of Coventry. Dr Higgins had never attempted to hypnotise anyone, but lie saw the \\ hite boy was in a critical state of weakness from his involuntarily mirth, and ho placed his hands upon White’s head and said:— “Now look mo in the eyes, lo.u will wake up soon. You will stop laughing.” Gradually under constant repetitious of these commands, the laughter grow less continuous, and at last, after several hours, it stopped. But White was still under hypnotic influence. , , , . . Dr Higgins took the student out 111 his automobile lor a long ride, and at frequent intervals repeated, ion must wake up. You must come to yourself!” For two days the physician repeated his efforts to awake While, and finally brought him into a state nearly normal. Meanwhile Bergcnsen, the amateur hypnotist, had tried and failed to undo his work. MARTYRS TO SCIENCE. The roll of the illustrious _ martyrs to science has just been enriched by the name of Dr J. H. Wells, who recently succumbed to glanders in Loudon, 'after eighteen months of buttering, heroically sustained for the cause of humanity and the advancement of medical knowledge. -Martyrdom such as Dr Wells faced occurs with staitiing frequency and pathetic regularity. Less than two years ago a patient m quarantine at Singapore died, Government medical officers volunteered to make a post-mortem examination. Both men contracted plague. Both men died. A little earlier Di Allan Macladyea, an eminent bacteriologist, succumbed to a combination of two diseases. He was conducting a series of experiments with the bacteria of typhoid and Malta leyor with a view of discovering a vaccine that would prevent the diseases. By an accident, it is believed, he contracted both, and his name was added to the list of martyrs of the laboratory. A few months'later Dr \V. H. Brown, ot Leeds, died from cancer, contracted whilst operating two years previously. Following close upon the heels of Dr Brown’s demise came the death of Dr Seneca Powell, one of the best-known professors of'medicine

in the United States. Ho paid the penalty of daring investigation into earbolie aeid poisoning, after three years of torture. Professor Curie, who shared with his wife in the distinction of having discovered radium, was spared the agony of a lingering death by a street accident in Paris. His experiments with the new clement had scourged his hands and arms, which (almost completely paralysed) presented a horrifying sight. The Rontgen rays in the early part of the history of their application were responsible for the death of two men—one, Dr Wiegcl, of New York, and the other Clarence Dally, duel assistant to Edison. Owing to exposure to the rays, a cancerous growth developed on Daily’s left arm, the lower part of which had to be amputated. 'lhe lingers of his right hand had next to he taken oil, and the arm followed. But none of these expedients availed, and Dally died in 1!)0-1, after seven years of suffering, Dr Alacatier Pirrie made two expeditions along the course of the Nile to study tropical levers. He came home stricken with the disease he had sought to eradicate, and died, when the best years of his life should have been before hint, at the age of twenty-eight. Dr Dutton, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicines, died from tick fever contracted during experiments; Dr Giuseppe Bosao died at Turin from tuberculosis iu a similar fashion, and during an outbreak of spotted fever in Rome, Dr Zampagnani, while attending some of the victims, was attacked by the malady, and. with death staring him in the face, wrote a treatise on the fevex which before long bore him off to a martyr’s grave.