Citizens Say

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 721, 22 July 1929, Page 8

Citizens Say

(To the

Editor.)

IMPROPERLY DRESSED ON | PARADE Sir, In the train on Tuesday evening t\yo male passengers were sitting together and each had a copy of The Sun in his hand. One remarked: “Here’s a writer wants shirkers shot at dawn.” Of course, this suggestion in my previous letter was merely a figure of speech. If law, however, the liability would act as a deterrent to shirking. Human weakness often requires some extra urge to do the right thing. Away back in the remote past a review of volunteers was to be held at New Plymouth before the late Colonel Stopp The previous evening the captain oC a certain country corps addressed his company, saying: “Any man who misses the train tomorrow morning will be fined £l.” In the early morning one of the volunteers heard the engine whistle, and he rushed to the station carrying his pants under his arm! Another did likewise with his boots in his hand. For £1 meant a week’s wages. This is not romance, for I was witness UNCLE JIM. ADMISSION CHARGE, EPSOM Sir.—• We know you are ever ready.to put in a word in the true interests of sport. The time has now arrived when the question of reverting to the old charges of admission should receive the serious consideration of the Auckland Trotting Club. When these were raised some time ago there did not appear to be much justification, and we think there is less justification than ever now. Working people have been finding money rather tight lately, and resent having ...their sport, trotting, taxed at the whim of a few committeemen. Raise the prices of admission and reduce the stakes. Will such a policy work out in the best interests of trotting? No, it wont, and it will make many of us who really love the sport for its own sake feel verv bitter to those who are so misguided as to penalise the workers who support the people’s sport. We ask you, sir, would it not be better to do everything possible to popularise trotting and make it the favourite sport of the people? We do not desire to see the stakes reduced again, and they will not need to be if the committee of the Auckland Trotting Club seizes every opportunity to keep the goodwill of those who support trotting in Auckland. NOw is the time for wise counsel to prevail, as we feel that the

testing time has come. We appeal to the committee not to be found wanting, but to step out with a strong and confident policy which will be in the interests of the club, not only now but in the future. They have its destiny in their hands now. Let them not abuse their trust. Which of the committee is strong enough in moral fibre to move for a reduction in the prices of admission? TROTTING. DR. PETTIT'S LECTURE Sir, — I attended the lecture delivered by Or. W. M. Pettit at Scots Hall on Wednesday evening last, nominally on the subject of evolution, and I was extremely disappointed when the lecturer failed to advance any conclusive evidence in. support of his contention that evolution was not proven. As a student, I expected, at least, a worthy reply to the comprehensive survey of the subject made by the professors of the Science Faculty of the Auckland University College. Instead, however, I was overwhelmed with a mass of vague and misleading statements purporting to deal with Evolution, but actually having remarkably little to do with the question at issue. Perhaps one or two comments may interest your readers. Genesis and evolution are incompatible, we were informed, one or other must be accepted, both cannot. How this can be reconciled with the opinions of all the broad-minded leaders of modern scientific and religious worlds, that harmony is completely established between these two allegedly contentious extremes? Surely it cannot be seriously maintained, as Hr. Pettit asserts, that all evolutionists are atheists? Lyell, we hear, was the first to recognise the law of continuity in the deposition of sediments in 1850, and hence laid the foundations for modern evolution. The lecturer appears to champion the theory that land forms are due to catastrophic or miraculous events. A very slight knowledge of geology would have convinced him that Lyell merely followed in the footsteps of Hutton. who originated the law of continuity sixty years before, that Darwin first placed modern evolution on a firm basis, though Boffon, Lamarck and others had expounded it previously, and that the catastrophic theory was discarded half a century ago. Only once was a definition, of the (Continued in next column.)

subject approached, and then the audience had to be content with an obscure statement concerning the supposed ancestor of man and the anthropoids. This is, of course, a very narrow conception of evolution, which, is properly, “descent with modification”; but, even so, I consider it very inconsistent to endeavour immediately to disprove the theory by reference to the skele- ' tons of man and ape. Where do the “missing links” come in? The skulls of Pithecanthropus and Eoanthropus were shown on the screen and ludicrous comments were made thereon, the Heidelberg and Cro-Magnon men were casually mentioned, but the Neanderthal and Rhodesian skulls were ignored. No detailed comparison of these was made with man. With regard to embryology, the idea of the projecting coccyx of the human embryo being indicative of an ancestral tail was ridiculed. Why then are human babies sometimes born with tails? Equally foolish was the statement that a small embryonic arm could not exist in the progeny of a long-armed race. jjSK*gardless of the fact that the embryos of the huraan being and the ape are almost identical in this respect. It is scarcely necessary to comment further on the lecture. I think these remarks alone will show how absurd it is for anyone with very little biological and no geological knowledge to attack the deductions of the greatest scientists of the age, in this respect, particularly when the actual evolution or gradual change throughout aeons of time, with its causes, etc., is not even touched upon. It was to be expected that, in such circumstances, no questions were allowed at the end of the lecture. _ P.D., A.U.C. INDIGNANT CITIZENS Sir,— . I am forwarding herewith copy oi a petition which has been handed to the Auckland Hospital Board, and is to be considered at its next meetingMay I ask you to insert this in The Sun? It will then become known, ann the subject will be properly ventilated in your columns. There are 90 signatures and hundreds more could J» ave been obtained had time permitted. RATEPAYER COPY OF PETITION Auckland, July, 1929. The Chairman, and Members of Hospital Board. Gentlemen, — __ „ . We, the undersigned residents ratepayers of the Grafton district ot J City of Auckland desire hereby to voie our strong objections to the erection of the infectious diseases tal in our midst, and virtually near centre, of our rapidly-expanding city. We understand that, many years ag was foreseen that, with increasing pcp« lation, it would be positively dangcro i to retain such a branch of the hosp. within the city itself, and a sit© tOT purpose was purchased in the Manur district. . «hioThe recent enormous increase oi ping from tropical countries ha 3 dered the danger and probability oi j troducing malaria and other trop diseases into our semi-tropical chn» very much greater than ever beior©, iwe believe this new feature of the Q . tion deserves the earnest attention : your board—especially as concentra and unwieldiness is being so abandoned by the most successful up-to-date hospitals the world over. Trusting you will give this mn&cgT objections your very serious consia tion. We are, gentlemen. t - Yt>ur obedient servants-