CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 301, 15 May 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

A TAILLESS DOfi. Some, misguided person lias, after much trouble, produced a tailless dog by tlie process of cutting oft' the useful member through successive generations. We have been successful enough in getting large useless, eggless liens; huge, unnatural and scentless flowers; tasteless vegetables. pipless fruit, and so on. But, although we try very hard by careful rule and daily application, wo have not, yet produced joyless children. Rigid scholastic restriction has been considered good for youngsters for hundreds of years, but the fact that the child mind easily resumes normality after dreary doses is one of the reasons why the child still laughs and screams with joy and kicks holes in his boots. Man loves to produce bizarre and unnatural effects. Tie likes to see dogs doing un-canine things, elephants climbing ladders and horses firing pistols. The painful child prodigy claims his special admiration. The infant adult is a tragedy. Tie is a proof of the absurdity of producing animal monstrosities of any kind. Apparently all thinkers do not believe that unnatural treatment of children rebounds harmlessly. For instance, this is found in the London Morning Post: "Our children are herded all day between four Avails to sit silent, motionless, listening, physically passive, like human sponges feeding on words and signs and shadows. And we see around us puny, white-faced, undersized children, afraid of a blow or a fall, trembling before a physical danger, recoiling from hard, muscular work, incapable of bearing fatigue, unfit in body and spirit to meet the battle of real life. By this class-room, desk, and bookish system of ours we are training youths, but physically and mentally fit to sit on a stool and drive a pen. We arc manufacturing mochiues with the bodies and minds of a, clerk, and, saddest of all. with the spirit and manhood of a clerk. Those that thrive on the unnatural diet pass on to the office stool and the teacher's desk. They are the successful and respectable. Others there are who cannot

digest the diet; they long for the leaving age, and begin the real preparation for life in the action of the workshop and factory after a wasted boyhood. As for the scallywags of the school, those with inborn grit become our soldiers, sailors and emigrants, the pioneers of the Empire; the rest make up the list of loafers, tramps, criminals, and unemployable*." But the Morning Post does not tell us what we are going to do about tailless dogs, eggless heiiß, piplcss oranges, adult children and joyless infants. And we certainly don't know.

MORE ABOUT EATS. There is no violent hurry locally to begin a campaign against the pestilent rat, for as a local gentleman remarked, "the council has other fish to fry." It is interesting to know, however, that the work the local authorities will not do can be insisted on, if necessary. The following regulations issued by the Minister of Health under the Public Health Act are being enforced in Dnnedin:— They (1) compel the destruction of rats by poisoning or trapping, or such other means as the district health officer may direct; (2) compel the abolition of rat nests or haunts; (3) authorise the making a house or building as far as practicable proof against rats, the removal of offensive rubbish and refuse from any premises likely to offer harborage for rats; (4) and lastly, direct that, as far as practicable, every article which is like-' ly to be food for rats shall be protected l from access by rats. The onus of these ! regulations is placed upon the owner or occupier. The inspectors will call and inspect; then, if necessary, serve a notice and this puts the onus upon the owner or occupier. City authorities are laying special stress on the necessity of destroying rubbish heaps. The nocessitv is as apparent in New Plymouth as it is in Auckland or Wellington, and the only method to ensure the destruction of noisome accumulations is by house to house inspection and subsequent legal proceedings, if necessary. Auckland, the home of the plague rat, is apparently not particularly anxious up to now to render the city less liable to infection, for the health officer there has written to the harbor board regretting that that body has not seen fit to make the sea-wall at the railway wharf untenable for rats. The fact that plague-stricken rats are still being found in "the Queen City" suggests that Auckland has not yet got over its epidemic of triumph at the census returns. As far as may be gathered, Dunedin is the only centre of population that has determined to exterminate rats by every possible means. Other centres are, of course, smiting the visible rat wherever he is seen, and the rodent is being harried all over the country—except in New Plymouth, When the local rat sits up and looks at you, and it is hard to frighten him' to his lair, it seems to prove that the municipal authorities regard him as a valuable acquisition to be carefully protected. We suggest that a by-law be framed as soon as possible ordering a close season for rnts and exacting a fine from anyone found killing these municipal pets.