CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 307, 22 May 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES. In all modern countries the desire to '•keen up appearances" has greatly complicated social life. The days when men and women took pride in their avocation and its distinctive apparel are gone. All of us like to give the impression that we lire 'better off, or better born, or cleverer than we really are. It is, perImps, more a symptom than a disease, but it certainly exists. Even in New Zealand, before charitable aid boards, one comes across people uppealing for help clothed as if they- owned carnages or motor cars. We 'all like the world to note the glossy texture of our outer garments, even though there are holes in our singlets and "darns" in our socks. The general pride has to be fed with money. The. larder may suffer for the •wardrobe, or the child for the adult. Not long ago the "Church Times" noticed a phase -of the question. Said it:— are regarded as encumbrances, first to their parents and afterwards to society and themselves. Tire place is too .strait- for them. Undoubtedly this estimate of the heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord, so different from the old parental joy and pride in a large family, is connected in part with a real difficulty in launching children upon the world, in part with false ideas of the quantity of this world's goods and pleasures without which life is not worth living. It is curious that, in losing its power of being magnificent, the present age has also lost the power of being simple. It is sumptuous without splendour and luxurious without being stately. The duty of 'keeping up one's position iu life' has become old-fashioned, but the right to have a good time in this world is regarded by an ever-increas-ing number of people in all classes as one of the postulates of existence."

"THE TRACKERS ARE OUT." Thev are searching for a murderer in Wes'tralia. The New Zealander unacquainted with the Australian black does not understand the significance of the line, "The black-trackers are out." It will be but a few years, one supposes, before this wonderful race of people is wiped out, for almost ceaseless war is waged against the black. The increase of settlement drives the blacks back. The blacks have difficulty in getting food. Predatory by nature, they attack the white settlers. Then come the police and the "dispersal." The Wcstralian police would be like men with wooden legs without their comrades, the aboriginal trackers, and of course it is necessary to obtain the blacks for this service whose native instincts have not been blunted by "civilisation"—which generally means' loafing, immorality and beer. The untutored black on a track is one of the two dozen eighth wonders of the world. He sees signs invisible to the white man's eye. He will pick out the track of a horse he has once seen on a road where hundreds- of hoof prints have made recognition seemingly impossible. To an expert tracker, the police have merely to show the boot of an escapee. The escapee will be found living or dead. A black tracker has been known to follow the trail of a criminal over the stone sidewalks of a city. He is able, in rapidly following a track he has once picked up. to describe minutely and seriatum the actions of an escapee. The bent twig, the misplaced blade of grass have meanings to him. He who can follow the flights of a bee on the wing and go straight to its tree-hive, makes pastime of following a man or a horse. Little blnek children learn tracking as little white children learn to play marbles and "hide-and-seek." They rejoice in picking up the tracks of an insect, and in following it either under ground or up a tree, because it is necessary in after life that they shall be able to track their food and their enemy. The police black-tracker is used most largely to track men of his own color, and it is in this work that he exhibits the most amazing instinct, because his quarry understands bushcraft as well as he and tries to defeat his pursuer. Tluis in thick bush a black has been known to travel many miles in the trees without touching ground. One black prisoner broke gaol in South Australia with the niiinaeles still on him and shuffled along thp seashore in the water for miles so as not to make a track. Others wrap emu feathers round their feet, but none of these devices throw a good tracker off the "scent." And talking about "scent," an ex-Westvalian policeman stoutly holds that the Australian black really has the gift of "scenting." It is at least certain that the blacks frequently get close enough to the ground to smell it. The miserable apology for a block that, has survived in the midst of white men is generally as devoid of the power to track as he is incapable of throwing a boomerang. As the influence of the white man—and the Chinainnn—widens, he will be a still more miserable apology. When we have taught all the blacks the ways of civilisation we shall have untaught them all that has made them useful, and of more profound interest to the scientist than any race still allowed to exist by permission of the white man.