Citizens Say—

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 34, 3 May 1927, Page 8

Citizens Say —

To the Editor,

THE TIMBER INDUSTRY Sir, — As a timber worker by occupation, but unfortunately at the present time one of the many of the unemployed in Auckland of this class, may I invoke (without being considered presumptuous) your valuable assistance which would, I feel sure, help again to place our great timber industry, the largest of any wage-paying secondary industry in the Dominion, to keep going and find constant work for the thousands of employees, besides their families depending on it for their livelihood?

We are having, through mills not being kept going, a bad time this winter. and as far as I can see, the future does not seem to offer any chance of having a better time except some special effort is made to mend things. Many of our sawmills and bushes are now only working half-time, some less, and many have closed down altogether; more will be compelled to close down if the demand for our native timbers does not improve, and I should say that it is up to all patriotic citizens and well-wishers for the prosperity of New Zealand to use native timbers, which are unsurpassed in quality for house-building, manufacture of furniture and doors, and are surely superior to the timber coming into the country in such large quantities from abroad; and I should say further that it is up to the Government to increase the duty considerably on the imported timber.

I feel sure we do- not thoroughly realise what the using of native timbers means to us and the amount of money it causes to circulate in the Dominion; for every million feet of timber sawn the mill-owner pays in wages at least £6,000, and every million feet of sawn timber brought to Auckland, say from Ohakune, costs in freight, in round figures, £ 3..000, and a similar amount of stand-

ing timber bought by the sawmiller from the Government costs from £1,500 to £2,000. We could help to enrich ourselves enormously by circulating all this money in our own country, instead of helping to impoverish ourselves by sending it away. WORKER. EVOLUTION Sir,— It ill becomes one, of Reuben E Dowle’s controversial equivocation, to accuse me of evasion. He commenced this discussion with the claim that there are many anti-evolutionary scientists. Challenged to produce names, he hastily retired, and no inducement was sufficient tp overcome his diffidence. Later he was volubly insistent that no new species had ever been produced, but tamely retreats under a cover of facetiousness upon being confronted with evidence. That evidence, which is fatal to his case against evolution, is by no means exhaustive, but could be greatly amplified bv details of the work of Professor Biffen, of Cambridge, and others. Your correspondent sedulously avoids any reference to my deductions from geological research and vestigial structures, and finally stakes his whole case on an open challenge to disprove that embryology, comparative anatomy and palaeontology, absolutely shatter the theory of evolution. In making this challenge, Mr. Dowle is well aware that the unquestioned resemblance revealed by these sciences are only a part of the case for evolution, and that it is not only his work to first produce some (evidence of the alleged “shattering,” but his raison d’etre in the controversy. lam asked to disprove an unsupported assertion, and an unsupportable one; for on the face of it these resemblances sustain evolution, and it is mere verbiage to say they do not and leave it at that. However, a few additional facts from the selected sciences may continue the presumably broadening of Mr. Howie’s knowledge of the subject. In a previous letter I enumerated the transformation (roughly comparable to lower forms of life, in an ascending order of complexity), through which

the human embryo passes frow commencement as a single cei* birth No prating of “unity in _ sign” explains such facts. Brow; Julian Huxley says: “If there Wwho ar6 sceptical about evolutt them remember their own, it . studying.” Experiments witii embryos of animals have result*; the production of monstrosities • kinds. The application of ma& ®, chloride to the eggs of frogs young tadpoles to grow up wit" one eye. This shows how 3 ' selection may work even on oped embryos, in the producu new species. £ , In considering comparative au f the question arises as to why a ground plan should persist in> a , adapted to all kinds of life. exemplified in my first letter a ~- design of forelimb being uS _ running, swimming, flying or' ip ing. Yet we find that animfu , forming similar functions — suC ® #■ lobster and newt —are built o • different plans, while the the crustacean group remain .pg whether used as feelers, jaws, legs, or swimmers. Mr. Dow* tl «cy ponder on the feeble inadeq his hypothesis to solve the V presented by these facts. [This correspondence is now —Ed., THE SUN.] CHEQUE IN BALLOT Bo* Sir, — pi An article headed “Cheque 1 Box” appeared in the papers or two after election day •JJJ* a sidelight on the close scrutiny tained at the first counting votes. How was it that the did not turn up at that time* a paper totally foreign to the > paper, a close scrutiny show® \ detected it at the time and n left it until the official J way, what was a voter doing v cheque in his hand in the booth! x ONE OF THE CANDID-***^