CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 103, 21 October 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

| THE OPUXAKE RAILWAY. J Naturally there is a good deal of disapj pointment in South Taranaki at there being no mention in the Railway Authorisation Bill of the starting of the Opunake railway. We noticed in the Public Works Statement there is extended reference to the electrification of railways. At first the only possibility of electrification seemed to be in the Lyttelton and other tunnels, but from what we learn there may soon be a. complete revolution in the working of the railway system. Light railways, it has been proved, according to the' Minister, can now successfully be worked by electric power in connection with the road system, largely doing away with difficulties that at certain seasons prove insurmountable, Jf this is so, the cost (if railway construction can be reduced considerably, because there will be no need of heavy cuttings and flat grades. It seems to us that the Government cannot do better in making a start with the application of electricity to the railway system than with the Opunake line. There should be no difficulty about power. Already there is an electric generating plant o'n the Waingongoro river, which probably could be extended to provide whatever extra power is required for railways or tramways at a cost of a few thousand pounds. The suggestion is well worth the consideration of the Government. The. question of route is one that should be settled by independent experts.

CHINA'S MILLIONS. The keenness of the struggle for existence in many districts of China is a prime factor in producing the political discontent that is finding expression at the present time in revolution. Pror fessor- E. A. Ross tells the readers of the Century Magazine that in two-thirds of China the traveller can find no vacant ground on which he can pitch a tent. There is no roadside, no common land, no plantation or orchard. The whole face of the country is cultivated like a Dutch garden, the roads being mere, narrow tracks through the crops, while dividing fences, which would cause a waste of room, are practically unknown. Only agricultural methods of an extraordinarily painstaking character have saved the soil from exhaustion. No natural resource is too trifling to be turned to account by China's teeming millions. The sea is raked and strained for edible plunder. Seaweed and kelp find a place in the larder. Enormous quantities of little shellfish, each one no bigger than a threepenny piece, are opened and made to yield a food that finds its way far inland. The fungus that springs up in the grass after a rain is eaten, and potato vines are fried for the poor man's table. "The roadside ditches are baled out for the sake of fishes no longer than one's finger," says Professor Ross, "(ireat panniers of strawberries, half of them still green, arc collected in the mountain ravines and offered in the markets. No weed or stalk escapes the bamboo rake of the autumnal fuelgatherer. The grass tufts on the rough slopes are dug up by the roots. The sickle reaps the grain close to the ground, for straw and chaff are needed to burn under the rice-kettle. The leaves of the trees arc a crop to be carefully gathered. One never sees a rotting stump or a mossy log." The silkworms are eaten after the cocoon has been unwound from them. Dome-tie animals of ;il! kinds become butchers' meat in their old age. and in Canton dressed rats and cats arc exposed for sale. Professor Ross noticed that his boatmen cleaned and ate the heads, feet and entrails of the fowls used by the cook. Pressure of population, in fact, has brought about a condition of grinding poverty scarcely to be understood in more favored countries. |

MR. l-:niS()X INTKItVIKWI'.I). MY. Ellison, foremost of tin: world's inventor.-, has been interviewed by a contributor to a Home magazine. Mr. Edison believes that in order to inerea.se the rate of progress of humanity the parents must devise means, of '"starting right" in the education of the children, lie lias no respect at all. for the studies that are of no practical use'in later life. "Lal'm and Creek—what good are they?" he says. "People say these things train the mind. P.ul. 1 don't think they train the mind halt' so much as working out practical problems. Work is the' best kind of school to train the mind. Hooks are to show the theorv of thine.-, bill doing the tiling itself is wliat. conn!-." The inventor would like to see the children given toys that would raise problems and involve I bought. In regard to his own method of work, he states that he does not practise rigid concentration ou one line of thought

statement loads Mr. Edison to discuss the wonders of the human mind, lie can understand or imagine, he says, the capacity of the brain for storing memories and impressions, but he cannot fathom the mystery of the will that directs the mind. His own invention, the phonograph, enables a song or speech to be recorded permanently on the surface of a wax cylinder. "I once made a. calculation and found," he says, 'that if it, were possible to make a cylinder of diamond three-quarters of an inch in diameter and four inches long, by shaving off the records after each layer was made there could be recorded thereon all that a person could say in talking ten hours a day for thirty years, and none of it would be beyond the limits of the microscope." This calculation supplies an illustration of the tireless spirit of investigation that has given Mr. Edison world-wide fame.

when lie is seeking to overcome a diflifiilty or discover a new method, lie keeps six or pieces of work ill his mind nt the same time, and turns from one to another very much as the mood strikes him. lie has found very often that after lie has despaired of success in a particular direction juul has directed his attention to a different matter altogether, the idea that he had lacked has suddenly Hashed across his mind. This