The Daily News THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 1905. NOTE AND COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 784, 30 March 1905, Page 2

The Daily News THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 1905. NOTE AND COMMENT.

Suttee, the ancient Hindu custom of immolating a widow at SUTTEE, her husband's funeral, was thought to have disappeared long ago, but an atrocious case of this form of human sacrifice has recently been reported in tho British province of Rehar. A Brahman named Chandhi Misr died somo time ago, and it was arranged that his body should be cremated on the banks of a river. The widow, having bathed and adorned herself as if for a wedding, took her scat on the funeral pyre, and ordered her son, afterwards punished for the offence, to IMjrform the duties prescribed byHindu piety. He and others, in the presence of a great crowd, set light to tho pyre, and the living was consumed with the doad, amid invocations to the gods, the clashing of, cymbals, and the blowing of shell trumpets. This is an isolated instance, of course, and not improbably it will be the last case.. In 1817, according to the Abbe Dubois, over seven hundred casts of suttee occurred in the Bengal Presidency, and in 1819 four hundred cases were reported in the Calcutta district alone. Successive Viceroys, though they condemned the practice, refused to run coun'ter to Hindu. opinion by suppressing it, but Lord William Bentinck ultimately declared it illegal. The IG'ovornoY-Xieneiial's policy was actually contested in an appeal to the Privy Council, but since 1829 suttee has been a crime in the eyes of tho law. Lady Amherst, wife of one Viceroy, who refused to move against the practice, relates in her diary that when the Rajah of Jaipur died 18 women and 18 mm of his household were burnt with his body, including the court -barber, as the Uajnh could not go to Paradise unless there was someone to shave him. The "object of sacrificing the widowwas, primarily, to secure the hus-

band's comforts in tho other world, and to prevent hiai from vexing posterity by spirit visits to the world. Material considerations, no doubt, accounted for the persistence of the custom in India and elsewhere. R prevented widows from becoming burdens on the community, ami, as a cynical African chief explained to Miss Kingsley, it was an effective check on lmsWand poisoning.

General Linlevitch, who has been appointed a s General

GENERAL Kuropatkin's succesLINIEVITCH'S sor, was previously CAREER. commander of the First Siberian Army Corps, and has had a long record us a lighter. He served first in the Caucasus, from 18.VJ till 18G1, and distinguished himself in the RussoTurkish war of 1877>-78. He received the colonelcy of the Second TransCaspian Rifle Urigadc in 188.3, and there continued his study of Asiatics and their methods of lighting among the warlike Turkomans of the region north of T'ersia. Promoted to be Major-Gcneral in 1891, General Linicvitch •was transferred, four years: later, to the military command of Vssuria, the Russian province which touches the north Corea. Ihiring the Boxer outbreak of 1900, his timely intervention h-aved a company of English soldiers from imminent destruction. Like General Kuropatkin, Admiral Skridloff, and liaron Ktackelberg, General Linievitch fought in the Turkish war of 1877-78, and, like tho first and third of these warriors, he was there) grloviously wounded. In thin war he received the Cross of St. George of the fourth class, the decorations of this order being given only for distinguished personal valour, and in the Roxer outbreak he was dtcoratcd with the St. George of the 'third class, for a like tion.In the New Century Magazine, Mi' Gilbert H, Grosvenor ITRIFYING describes a new method WATER.; of purifying water by the agency of copper sulphate, the method being the discovery of Pr. George T. Moore. "'Every school abbratoi'.v," says the writer, "contains some beautiful blue crystals of copper sulphate, and yet, who would have imagined that a pinch of these crystals dissolved in the wattsp tank in the attic, or in the cistern or w)I, would kill any typhoid germs that mltfhl be lurkingl there : that its use would insure ■healthful drinking water in a crowded, military camp ! that it would exterminate malaria and jrjlow-fcvcr-car-ryfng moWfuHoß in stagnant pools and swamps, by destroying the vegetable organisms on which the mosquito larvae food ; that ft would, in a few hours, make the water of an evil-smelling and foul-looking city reservoir, containing billions of gallons of wafer, clean and sweet ; and that the amount of copper that accomplishes all this is so small that while it kills the bacteria in the water it does not ninkp the drinking water poisonous or injurious to the human system ? IE has tiwnn known for a long time that copper destroys bacteria, but the metal lias nol been much used heretofore (or the purpose, hcrjniutc scientists have generally believed 'that the do«.e required to kill must be very concent rated —so Concentrated in fact that it would poison the water. Dr. George T. Moore has now announced, with the authority of the T'nited States Government behind him., that he has discovered how to get the good effect of copper without any dangerous result : that he has a way of using I copper so diluted that it cannot hurt a babe, and yet so active that it will destroy virulent cholera and typhoid bacilli, in four or live hours. A dose of one part copper to 100,- | 000 parts water has been used successfully to sterilise a reservoir in- 1 fected with typhoid. The cost of the treatment is. ridiculously small., ranging from 50 cents to three dollars per million gallons, t's'ually, a much ! weaker dose than one to 100,000 is I effective."