The Census.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3826, 2 April 1881, Page 2

The Census.

Sunday night being the time appointed for taking the Census of the colony, all persons should be careful to fill up the forms delivered to them. In order tHat our readers may be aware of the penalties attached to non-compliance with the law, we quote the following clause from the Act:—

If any occupier or person in charge of any dwelling, distinct storey, or department refuse or wilfully negleot to fill up, to the best of his knowledge or belief, the form or forms so left at his dwelling, storey, or apartment, or to sign and deliver the same, or refuse or wilfully neglect to answer, or untruly answer any inquiry made by a sub-enumerator, or wilfully make, Bign, or deliver, or cause to be made, signed, or delivered, any false return or statement of any particular in such form or forms, or obstruct any person in the performance of any duty under this Act;, the person so offending shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds. But such penalty shall not be enforced against any persons who, from conscientious scruples, shall omit to state the religious denomination or nee to which he may belong, and the proof of such conscientious scruple Bhall be the filling up of the column set apart for that purpose with the word ' object.'"

Other provisions of the ordinance are equally stringent, and in default the penalties aresummarily recoverable. The taking of the census shall not apply to any Maori, except only at such time and in such manner as the Governor 1 shall from time to time direct. The census form should be carefully read by every householder, before filling it in, iv order that the information which the Assembly imposes upon all the persons employed may be accurately given and faithfully and correctly completed. The sub-enumera-tors will collect the papers on Monday and Tuesday.

Many of the agricultural?journals are sorely troubled to know whether a hen sits or sets. If some editor of dignity would set a hen on the neafrj and the editors would let her sit, it would be well for the world. Now a man, or a woman either, can set a hen, although they cannot sit her ; neither can they set on her, although the old hen might sit on them by the hour if they would allow. A man caanet set on the wash-bench ; but he could set the basin on it,- and neither the basin nor the grammarians would object. He could sit on a dog's toil if the dog were willing, or he might set his foot 1 on it. But if he should Bet on the aforesaid tail, or sit his foot there, the grammarians, n well as the dog, would howl. And yet, strange as it may seem, the man might set the tail aside and then sit dovia, and neither be assailed by the dog or the grammarians.—Christian World,

Me Ceoiibie Bbowk replies to Mr Bryce a? follows : —" As to the charge of ' alwayß trying to get money out of the Government,' I was commissioned, after my visit to Parihaka by Colonel Whitmore, then Defence Minister, to write for the information of the Governe ment a description of the country immediately surrounding Parihaka, „ accompanied by a sketch plan, for which"! was to receive payment. The work was,not done until the present Ministry came into power, when on completing the work, I received the stipulated sum. This is the only Government money I have ever received, or sought to receive. Colonel Whit mdre's reaeon for asking me to do the work was that none of the officers on the West Coast then had any knowledge of the nature of the immediate surroundings of Parih#ka, and he considered the information would be reliable in the event of hostilities. With reference to asking to be appointed private secretevy to Mr Bryce, there" seemed a strong probability at one time that newspaper correspondents would not be allowed to cross the Waingongovo with the constabulary. My instructions were that I must go, and, being on friendly terms with Mr Bryee, I suggested, in view of the probability that correspondents would be stopped, tbat the difficulty might be got over by my getting some nominal appointment on his staff. This was done in the case' of Mr Florence McCarthy, who received a lucrative appointment in order that he should act as coirespondent to the Ministerial journals. The statement that ' the officers at Werekino would have no more of him' is a cowardly attempt to throw the responsibility of his own action upon the officers. On the day on which the paper containing my letter exposing the gross roadmaking blunder, reached New Plymouth (Mr Bryce, Major Atkinson, and Colonel Roberts being there), Colonel Roberts, acting on instructions, telegraphed to Major Tuke that I. waa to be immediately expelled from the mess. So far from it being the action of the officers, they, as fa? as they dared, expressed their disgust at the order, and sympathy with me. They asked me repeatedly to remain in camp. The commanding officer promised to do everything to secure my personal comfort and facilitate my work. The fourth statement, that I had turned round vowing that I would ' make it hot for the U-overnment,' is an unmitigated falsehood. Although naturc.lly indignant, I cerefully abstained from eveu discussing the matter with anyone."

Some remarkable specimens of Canadian produce have been recently exhibited at Liverpool. Amongst theoi are, a carrot 4ft long and lft in circumference, potatoes weighing 4£ibs each, two beets weighing 12lb, two "citrons 331b, a vegetable marrow 231b, a '•squash" 3131b, witli a girth of 9ft 6iu, etc.

A California inventor has made a machine for pressing and drying potatoes so that they will keep for years, yet preserve their natural flavour. No chemicals are used in the operation of curing, everything being done by a simple machine capable of pressing six hundred bushels of potatoes in twenty-four hours. The machine not only presses the potatoes; but lays them on a tray in a concave form with the hollow side down. After the pressure they are put into a drying apparatus, where they remain for. two hours; then they lire ground into coarse meal resembling cracked rice.

A woman, just married, wishing to impress her husband with her ability as a housekeeper, bawled out to the servant as she entered the door : " Matilda, bring me the washboard; I want to wash the potatoes for dinner." "Yes," said an affectionate mother, " the first year of my daughter's marriage I thought her husband was an angel, and I'm sure that every year since I've wished he was one."

For remainder of News see lsi Page.

witliqut. ,^b^ijjg__qonsulte.d magisterially exerts itself and always naturally, and of course, comes forward to anticipate a sentence higher;than its own, wliich shall eventnally confirm its decisions." Butler was thus teaching what Shakespeare did, that there .was with us an instinctive; organic tendency, to anticipate rewards and punishments behind the veil. The progress of modern science only made this more emphatic. But they might say he was the Evolutionists, who ... argued that conscience was an outcome of our environment or of our ancestors. Supposing that to be the case, how did they get their intellect by which they knew that they got conscience by environment or from their ancestors ? Was that the outcome of environment too ? There was nothing in them which might not be as justly called the result of environment as conscience. If they said conscience was ? .the. .result exclusively of. .their entironment or"of Hheir'anc'estorsv he would reply that intellect was as exclusively j a result of such education or of the race. All our social instincts are. Indeed the school of evolutionists taught us to believe that the only difference between the brute and the.man. was to be accounted for by environment-—that' was to say, intellect, -social instincts, moral nature, were all boxed into us by environment. Why not, then, apply .it to the moral sense. We have been boxed together right in everything else, why not infer that we have been boxed together right in ithe'matter of conscience P After referring to the argument of the evolutionists based on the migrating instinct of birds and some animals, he said it was too late for any man to take these philosophies to his heart in their central portions, for they required him to believe that God -did not keep his word to us wherif they knew he did with every other part of creation. Emerson began as a , .follower of Hegel, but of late he had abandoned Pantheism. He had published an essay on immortality, in which he gave his reSion -for believing that personal existence awaits us beyond the veil, and his reason was " God keeps His word with the instincts he has put within us." More men had been convinced by that one argument than by any other,. and it wai but safe to say that the progress of physical and metaphysical research had not weakened it. No modern philosophy could undermine this foundation of adamant, and if he was right in his higher 'faculties as in his lower, then he knew there was something in the undiscovered country that ought to puzzle the will, and that conscience not only ought but does make cowards of us all. If they were to agree with the profoundest ethical research.of their times,, they must take God at his word, not only in our tendencies, hut in this great constitutional, moral impulse, or he might almost say this -migrating tendency. For himself, he was sure that he had a scientific right to lean on God's word, and he felt that He who kept His word to the fishes and birds -would do so also by him, assured that He would ultimately provide in His own 'bosom a climate to match organic instinct within him. Turning to the physiological'side of this discussion, Mr Cook, with the aid of illustrative diagrams, described a single cell of the human tissue. The subject he was to discuss was the living germinal matter, bioplasm. Three kinds of matter were concerned in the growth of- all living tissues—nutrient matter, living matter, formed matter. The law of biogenesis had never been successfully disputed. The question was— "Where did the first of these parts come from P Darwin believed that creative thought, a supernatural act, introduced life into lifeless matter. Professor Huxley did not adopt the theory of spontaneous generation, but undoubtedly he and , Professor Tyndall would be glad could that be proved. A great book from Edinburgh, he believed made permanently clear to all thoughtfuland serious minds that behind the seen universe must lie the unseen. " The Unseen Universe" he tjianked Edinburgh for. Its. lines of attack on Materialism were invulnerable so far as they had been assailed. He showed the growth of tissues, muscles, nerves all different from the bioplasm, the *' life stuff." We were fearfully and wonderfully made, and what made us was this;■ wonderful bioplasm. It wove the brain, the highest organisation known to man.. How could they account for the - variety of webs woven by this one sort of shuttle P What was the cause of the form of organism? That was the causegerminal matter. But there must be a cause for the variety in form of organisms. They knew what it was. Pointing to a diagram showing the structure of the limb of a frog, and how it was produced by the germinal matter, Mr Cook said the question before them was —Life of Mechanism. , Was that (the frog) molecular machinery P Did they find themselves within or outside the domain of thought when they said the chemical affinities accounted for such a structure P If it accounted for what was around them, what accounted for chemical. affinities P Let them try to find a cause for the form of organisms. Mere chemistry would not account for such tissues, or chemical union, but it was said that physiological union accounted for them. But if there was no life in a chemical unit bow could they get life out of the physiological unit P The cause of nomenclature did not settle the cause. ' There was an adequate cause — —^for the combination of those parts, and life was the cause of form in organism. Suppose, he said, that life was the power - that-directs, not causes, the motions of germinal matter. Eemov© the thing called life from the tissues. He supposed there was a chemical difference between the body of a man before he has been Btrack-byjightping and the instant after his death f but it seemed strange reasoning to say. that the chemical difference accounted for all that followed. Life was - gone, and the chemical and mechanical powers left to their own will. He defined life to be the coordinate power of the whole organism; vitality, or rather irritability the" result of the organisation that life has produced; But man possessed something higher— free will; and wherever there was responsibility he would say there was a soul. Life coming before organisation was the cause of it; organisation produced irritability, and the response to irritability to stimulus produced automatic action. „ Theh must not think: that because they destroyed irritability by destroying organisation, they destroyed life which comes before organisation j nor suppose that soul, because it is in organisation, was destroyed by disorganisation. He referred to Professor Bain's theory , that matter was double-faced—physical . on one.eide, spiritual on the other. Bain's ' fallacy .was that he confused union with close succession. -That' theory amounted to thify that although a, door could not by

.any possibility be open and shut at the same time, and it would be a double-faced door, physical on the one side, spiritual on the other, and the entrance to the vast temple of materialistic monism. As a representative of the relations between •theology.and science, he had to say that Bain's system-was self-contradictory. What definition of life was justified by exact research concerning the growth of tissues P If they defined, life as the cause in organism, if. they admitted that a power must exist before it was manifested; if they said that organisation was an effect of life, they must admit that life, a material force, conaes before organisation, Snd-exists independently of it. If you admit that organisation does not begin all, how; then, can you deny that disorganisation may not. end all ? If life may come befor organisation, if life be independent of it, why might they not say that this power may exist after disorganisation. It was not; " therefore, wonderful that the Scripture should apeak of a spiritual body, adapted for our wants in another state of existence. It was no .more wonderful that we =should live again than that we should have lived at all. He would I affirm that if Agassiz, and Eichter, and Butler were right, if Cuvier was no dreamer on this theme, if the hosts of acute and saintly souls, who had believed as these men had believed* were' not wrong, then the argument for immortality, by striking against the possibility of. a concert of the combined life of all worlds, was not wrecked, but was itself transcendently glorified. The historical argument in the Bible proved the resurrection of our Lord; the resurrection proved the divine authority of Him who was thus fully attested ; His divine origin proved the doctrines he attested. Among these were his deity, immortality, the necessity of the new birth and the atonement, the eternal judgment—all that line of external evidences of Christianity which had stood for centuries The internal evidences of Christianity were the other side of the arch'—" He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine." A star rises in the heart of nim who yielded utterly to God, in total, irreversable, affectionate self-surrender. On that double arch Christianity had stood age after age; and so standing, he had the the right to say that science had nolreply to make to our Lord's assertion to the one who was crucified at His side : ** Today thou shalt be with Me in paradise."