The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1911. A SERMON ON DAYLIGHT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 98, 16 October 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1911. A SERMON ON DAYLIGHT.

j Man is an adaptable animal. He will I survive to a ripe ami unhealthy old age I j very often, even though he has lived in a dark and pestilential spot most of his J life. His eyes, devised in the first in- ( stance for seeing his breakfast (on the hoof) in the distance, have become used to concentration on near subject;, under artificial light. He who was turned out by the Creator to live under the sky, to be fostered, strengthcued and kept vigorous by air, sunshine, rain, hail, snow and > wind, has brought himself to living in stuffy houses with closed windows, in darkened rooms where the blinds are ever drawn for fear the sun may fade the two-guinea carpet, dirty offices with ten million microbe* to the square inch. ' He has come to believe that the wind and rain and God's good sunshine will hurt him, and tie seldom appreciates the Creator's wisdom until he gets consumption and is forced by medical science (which is simply the return of medical sense) to live in the daylight, the sumlight, the air, the wind, the water. Lots of people dote on babies because they are becoming scarce, and the doting frequently turns to wrapping them up in stuffy parcels, shading' them carefully, and stowing them in a place where they 1 can get nice and sick and weak and! ricketty, with a dear little ''(lummy" in ilkeir mouths for t'hc production of throat diseases and adenoids and things. Unless people revert to the common sense of the primitive man. the future 1 generation of calves and foals will be ' provided with umbrellas and rubber comforters to suck. Modern medical science (primitive natural "horse" sense) seizes a child that is dying of lack of nature and cruelly shoves it into the open air night and day (when its fond mother isn't looking), and saves its life. The petted youth who has been carefully shielded from sun and air, and has lived a life of muffler, umbrella, and stuffiness, is suddenly called upon to go and live the life of a stockman, a soldier, a traveller in the wastes. He sleeps under a tree, gets burnt with the sun and washed with the rain—and doesn't die or even catch a cold. The Creator has got hold of him again, and is conducting bis life in the old fashioned natural way. The same man when he returns to what is known as "civilisation," becomes a blind-lover, a muffler and umbrella man. an apostle of the overcoat, and all the rest of it. Nature works double-shifts to fit him for the new conditions. She takes more care of man than man deserves. AH this preliminary to saying a word or two about j microbes, sunlight, and "daylight saving." Catch your microbe. He is to be found in myriads in any dark sunless spot, or in your own throat for that matter. Very well. Take half your microbes into the sunshine—any sunshine will do. in the crowded street, in the bare paddock, on the roof of your house. In half an hour or less, even if you have put your 'mail friends (or enemies) into sunny. -un-swept water, il they will have perished. The collection >' you have in your sacred best room, where the family Tiihle is. >nit no other light, are in a perfectly healthy state. Therefore, oh brother, why not return In the [laths of primitive wisdom? Whether (he gentleman who introduced the a Daylight Saving Hill saw the question in this light we know not. but he possibly did. lie wants in put. the clock back, so that townspeople shall get their daily (ask over soon enough to get out and lei Ihe sun and air and light kill the microbes-(hat's all. Efficiency of mind is impossible without efficiency of body. The person who obtains too , little light, air and vaicr is an inefficient. He can't be otherwise. The indoor man in New Zealand tries to even things up. and fairlv successfully, by taking large do-cs of frr'-h air on halfholidays and at week-end-. Any method (hat can be devised whereby his fresh air ration is spread over a longer period I is going to make him a better man, nicer to live with, a better worker, less

pernickett-y, less liable to the innumci'- I able complaints that are always being 1 ! , discovered, a better brother, husband, I employee and grandfather. It doesn't i matter whether the clock is put on or ' back. Nature intended man to have as ' much air and sunshine as the sparrow or the domestic hen. There are men who regard nature as a disagreeable person who makes umbrellas necessary, men who have never perspired in their lives, and believe that the earth mother didn't know her business when she hung fruit instead of pills and plasters on trees. Enforced daylight saving might send them forth to a place where they might enjoy a life-giving sweat, or capture an appetite. Parliament, because it loves to do its work in a stuffy chamber with the windows closed and artificial lights, guffawed unhealthily when a misguided person suggested that all indoor New Zealanders should have a better chance of sampling the atmosphere. It was beyond their comprehension that the elements so necessary to make bone for the draught horse, beef for the bullock, plumage and eggs for the fowl, could be of any service to man. Modern people are always imploring one. "Mind you don't catch cold!") or ' : Oh dear, you're sitting in a draught!" or "Do close the carriage window!" The Society for Providing Warm Socks for Jersey Calves might bring the domestic animals more in line with their masters, who forget that their forefathers slept in the tree tops, and indulged in splendidly ventilated garments of leaves. We have been careful to exterminate several people by getting them to follow our example of avoiding daylight, of believing that the sight of a human being (as distinct from his clothes) is shameful and that it is savage to eat food as nature supplied it. We survive these disobediences of instinct because good old nature has been steadily working for many generations to evolve a person who doesn't die from breathing impure air, and gets along somehow in partial darkness, gets some inadequate sustenance from a variety of maltreated edibles, never in- . tended for animals with teeth. But what's the good of talking? A Daylight I Saving Bill is merely food for laughter. I So laugh, ye politicians, and you, ye ; stuffy ones!