PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 85

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. In Dunedin there has been going on a controversy between Mr J. MacGregor, f M.A., who has always taken a lively and intelligent interest in educational matters, and Mr Morell, the rector of the Boys' High School. Mr MacGregor thinks that the High School is not fulfilling its functions in our educational scheme — that ifc is training too many for city pursuits, and > the rector holds that it is fulfilling its part. Well, I'm not going to say who is right, but I do think that more money might be spssnt to advantage in classes for ' teaching boys and girls who are about to take up dairy, agricultural, and pastoral pursuits. The following shows I what was proposed in Victoria ' at the beginning of last year — a programme which I think was pretty well carried out. Couldn't we have some ' similar 6cheme ? In Canada there are , travelling schools, a full equipment going ' from place to place. Could not some of the larger country schools have connected i with them students taking agricultural and allied subjects under a specialist ? But read what I referred to as proposed and probably carried into effect in Victoria :—: — During the year 1907 the number of centre 6 at which agricultural classes will be held will be limited to 25. The course will last a fortnight, two lectures and demonstrations being given each afternoon and four limelight lectures on evening's to be arranged with the secretary of each centre. At least 40 students must be enrolled in each class, exclusive of school children. The rent of the hall and local charges are paid by the agricultural society, and all other expenses are defrayed by the department. Arrangements must be made to ensure the uninterrupted use of the hall for the term. The conditions under which medals and prizes are given are to be subject to the approval of the department. One course each week is compulsory, the second subject being chosen by the local committee from the following list: — First week, compulsory subject, the Principles of Agriculture; optional subject, one of the following: Sheep Breeding and Management, including wool classing and lambs for export, or Dairy Farming. Second week, compulsory subject, the- Care of Farm Animals; optional subject, one of the following : Poultry Breeding and Management, Agricultural Engineering, or Orchard and Garden Work. THE RULER OF THE WORLDS. What worlds ? That question I'll leave you to answer yourself. 1 am simply using the heading of a chatty article I read the other day, in order to introduce some paragraphs of the article itself. We ; have been having some warm weather j lately, but though we know that we derive all over heat fron? the sun we seldom give that great luminary any 'thoug/htj yet his "tremendous power keeps ail the planets whirling round him in their appointed paths, and calls in the comets from the far depths, and gives brightness and warmth to all his train of obedient followers." The article is almost entirely devoted to giving a clear idea of three points : the sun's great distance, his great size, an.d

; his appearance as seen through the tele- : scope. I When we see the sun and moon in the sky they look almost exactly the same Size, and yet the sun is really so much L bigger than the mcon that it would take i several millions of moorts to make a body as big as the sun. How- do the two look ' so equal in size, when the one is 6O much » b.ig-ger than the other? The rea6on is r that the sun is so very much farther away. ! If we could get a railway train to take us to the mcon at 60 miles an hour, we would get there in about five months and a-half; but if we could travel with the same train to the sun, the journey would take ue nearly a hundred and eighty years, and I am afraid very few of us could afford the price of the ticket, for it would come to nearly £4J0.000! When you happen to ' burn your finger, you know what takes place is something- like this : the nerves at the tip of your finger send up a message to your brain, and jour brain sends back a message that touching fir© is painful, and you pull your finger away. Of course that all happens so quickly that you don't really know it is happening-. But if you had an arm long enough to reach from here [ to the 6un, and put your finger on the t sun's globe to-day, no doubt that would be ; a spoiled finger ; but you would be a very . oid- man indeed before you knew that you , were burned, for the sense of pain would • take a hundred and fifty years to travel up • that gigantic arm to your brain. So you <■ oan see that really we cannot understand 1 properly how far the 6un is from us : the • distance is far too great for our minds to ' take it in. 1 When yo uthink that he is so far away. • and yet seems so bright and so hot, you [ can see that he must be tremendously big. The motor car which won the recent ' tourists' trophy in the Isle of Man kept up a speed of rather more than ' 40 miles an hour all the way. Well, if ', you could get that car to the sun. and 6tart > on a journey r.tght round the huge globe, . it would be more than seven years before ■ you got back to your starting point again. > Supposing that the sun were hollow, like 1 a great, 6oap bubble, you could put the > earth in the middle of it, and let the ' moon go on travelling round about the earth just as it does now, and there would etill be- room for another moon nearly as : far away again before you came to the outer shell of the bubble. As for the sun's heat — you know how uncomfortably warm things sometimes get !on a hot summer day ; but we may be : j thankful that the sun is so far away from ! us. for all oivr summer heats put together would be nothing compared to what we • would have if ho came really near. If he ' cam© as near as the moon does, I don't trink you would even have time to feel hot. You would just shrivel up and | vanish, and the whole solid earth, with its { groat mountains and soa-s and rivers, would j melt like a drop of wax. in the flame of a ' candle. • But now, perhaps, we have had enough about the size of the sun. Let us sec what he is like. When you soe him with the eve, he looks just like a flat white circle. But when we. turn our mirror on him we i shall see something very different. Only we must be careful ; for if you look at the sun with a big telescope without any protection for your eye, you will very likely lose your «ght, or at least injure it -very badly. Put your hand to the place where ' your eve would have been. There is a little round bright dot on your palm, | and there Yes, I thought, you wouldn't keep it, there long-. It was just j like a red-hot needle running through your j hand, wasn't it? So instead of looking j straight at, the sun. wo will make the j telescope into a kind of magic lantern, and throw the picture on this sheet of white paper. Here, then, is the sun s faro— a great, broad, white shield, shaded a little at the edge, so that you can see it is not flat, but a globe. And here are two or three little black splashes upon the whiteness, j ' looking is if somebody had spilt some ink 'on the paper. Now these black splashes 1 are the famous sun spots that we are always I hearing about. They don't look anything I very wonderful, do they? But let us try |to think what they really are like. icm see this one with the black centre and the I grey shading- all round about? Well, rt measures about sixty thousand miles from side to side, and the black centre of it measures about thirty thousand miles across. You could drop three worlds side by side .into it, and they would not fill up that little black spot. And this is by no means a very big spot, as these things go; I have seen several that were more than twice as big. Now what are these strange marks on the sun's face? I wish I knew myself: but no one knows quite certainly what they may be. Some astronomers thank they are great hollows, through which we look down into the interior of the sun as if we wore looking into the crater of a volcano; but that is not at all certain. All we can say is that they are caused by great storms and eruptions somewhere within the sun, and that they tell v? that this huge body, more than a million times as big- as our tvorld, is not solid and steady like the earth, but is constantly tossing- and heaving up and down almost like boiling water in a kettle. If you were to watch this spot for several days, you would sco that it is always changing. In a day or two it might look quite different from what it does to-day ; sometimes the changes come so quickly that bits of the spot which are nearly as big- as our world alter their shape and move about even while •people are looking: at them So you see that the sun would scarcely be a place that you would like to live in. Even if you could stand the great heat, which wculd melt iron far faster thai any furnace could, you would find that there was nothing solid to put your feet upon. Great fiery waves would always be rising- and falling- around you ; every now and then jets of flame would shoot up thousands of miles high; and sometimes huge gulfs would yawn beneath your feet, in which worlds might be \ swallowed up. But if you watch the spot, you will see another kind of change than this. It is near one edge of the sun just now ; tomorrow it will be nearer the middle; and in about twelve and a-half days or so it j i will be just going out of sight at the edge j ' Opposite to that where you first saw it ; j < while if you were to wait another twelve 1 and a-half or 13 days, you might feee it 1 appearing again just where it is now. Do 1 you know what that means? If you were i on the moon and watching our earth, you ] might see Scotland coming into eight at i the eastern margin of the globe. It would i cross tha centre, and go -out of sight at i

the western edge in 12 hours; and if you waited another 12 hours, you would see it appearing a-gain where you first saw it. So you would say, " The world takes 24 hours to turn round." Well, when a spot on the 6iin takes twelve and a-half days to go from one side to the other, and another twelve and a-half to come back into view again, that means, you ccc, that the sun turns round in 25 days, just as our world does in 24 hours. Only, and this is the strange thing 1 , it doesn't turn all at the same speed. Our world goes round all in a piece, and if it didn't I suppose it would fall to bits. But some parts of the sun take 25 days to turn round, some take 27, and so m e take longer still. You see, then, that the ruler of the worlds is very different from his subjects, though he is made out of much the same stuff. Indeed, I believe that if you were to say that the sun is more like a great bubble than anything else, you would not be far wrong. Of course it is such a bubble as you never dreamed of in all your life — a bubblo far bigger and heavier than all the worlds we have been thinking about rolled into one ; a bubble which, instead of beintr made of soap-suds, is made up of iron and lead and lime and all sorts of other things heated so hot t,hat they are nothing- but glowing- vapours.