THAT AIRSHIP.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 169, 10 August 1909, Page 2

THAT AIRSHIP.

Now thel Hi- headlight ..f the mvstcri- > »ii,- -ah-lii,,-' is reported tu |,aye made t, its ajipcarain-c ill Tiirn-iiiiki, the rcpro- [ duction (if some of -the remarks of the , Kcv. J'. U'. l-'nirclough— who writes to Hie Olago Daily rimes to the ell'eet that the airship craze is getting beyond u joke-should he timely. People haze been "seeing thing*" in various parts of the Dominion, and cjuite a number of doubtless respectable and ordinarily reliable folks have positively allinned'llial. Ihe thing seen'has been an jii.rsl.iip. Nome of them have even gone so far as to declare they have heard the rustle of ils wings, or rather the whirr of Its machinery, lint, unluckily for them, no one bus been able to run the mysterious vessel to earth. .Mr. l'aircJoiigh* considers that the explanation of the' "trail- is to lie sought iu psychology. The world, he says, had had a .great many examples of "extraordinary popular delu-ions," such as the South foa Hubble, the tulip mania in Holland, the credulity which floated- Titus Gates into infamy, the persecutors' witches, and dredging .boom*. These phenomena arise in times of public excitement, when ■'■ very whisper and shrug is taken as evidence, and the capacity to weigh matter--, is lor the lime submerged by ■•"in" human passion, such as fear or ti-i'i'il. Such a time of excitement has been brought perilously near by the German ,-■•.! re, the Dreadnought episode. I ami Ihe conquest of the air..' Kverylliing is ii,„. im d r ,. n( i y j or „ |)o])U | av (le . Insion. A spark starts the conflagration. Some imaginative person, deeply interested in nir-hips, sees some moving object, possibly a flight of birds, or a whisp of vapor, 'the wish is father to the thought. lie. sees an airship! One confident statement encourages manv I others, who have seen something to which they paid no particular attention, lo assume that the statement explains their own experience. Probably a toy balloon, which is kept afloat by a tiny llaine, .slufted the mysterious tales, libers at once remember having s'een lights. Some have seen moving lightfl on distant hills, others a meteor eOmin<' itlinost rail on, and so appearing- to move slowly, ami others have simply seen stare or planets which moved in relation to terrestrial objects as tlje observers moved aloiig. It is quite certain that iiiaiiy huve seen the fiery red planet Mars and watclied, it as tfco

"mysterious light." Mr. Fnircloug')

notes it as a curious' fact that, in this ugc of education, multitudes of people do not know that stars and planets rise and set, like the sun. Those people in this district who are sitting up nightly watching the progress of a brilliant light —a star—across the firmament, should turn their attention to other of the more luminous stars, and they will probably be surprised, and educated, to find I that other stars "move" also, though perhaps not as rapidly as the most br.il iiant one which k probably nearer the earth. If that explanation is not satisfactory, then let someone perform tno seemingly impossible, and materialise a real airship!