TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7953, 31 January 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Some short time ago the Minister for Agriculture in Victoria obtained tbe sanction of Parliament to a proposal to spend £3,000 for improving tbe breed of borses, and a Board was appointed to decide how best tbe money could be spent. It has now been decided to import a number of Welsh pony sires, the services of which will be available to farmers at a cheap rate. Some few years ago the late Mr H. O. White, of Havilah, imported a Welsh pony sire, the progeny of which with thoroughbred mares have found great favour with buyers of horses for tbe Indian market.

Amongst tbe largest sheep-owners in the colony are runholders in ihe Hawke's Bay and Poverty Bay. districts. Jn this connection tbe following figures are compiled from the annual sheep returns—T. S. Williams, Tuparoa, 89,907 sheep; R. Campbell and Sons, Waitaki and Wallace Counties, 85,960; Archdeacon Williams, Hawke's Bay, 79,772; Dalgety and Co., Wairoa, Vincent and Selwyn Counties, 74,210; New Zealand and Australian Land Company, Waimato, 62,953; G. P. Dounelly, Hawke's Bay, 60,010; R. D. McLean, Hawke's Bay, 56,000; G. and P. Hunter, Porongahau, 48,000; J. D. Ormond, Hawke's Bay, 52,199.

Having made inquiries from those well posted in the intentions of the Premier, says the Wellington correspondent of a Northern contemporary, I am satisfied that there is no present foundation for thw statement to the effect that Mr Jennings will be the new Minister for Lands, Mr Dunoan going to the UDper Chamber. Denial is also given to the assertion that Government members have beon sounded by various Ministers personally with regard to Ministerial and other changes. The statement that Mr McNab maybecome the Government nominee for the Chairmanship of Committees is qcouted here, seeing that the representative for Mataura has declined tho position on more than one occasion, preferring a hjgher dignity.

It seems now tolerably certain that, in spite of much controversy on the point, there is no such tbiDg a 9 a microbe of cancer. The investigations of a Royal Commissio.i indicate that the true cause of this disease is the peculiar growth oi' ourtaiu cells which have forsaken the prooer function. Under certain condition? some of the ordinary somatic cells take to multiply after the maimer of generative cells. It is the mass formed by . these body cells growing m an abnormal manner which constitutes the cancer. Hat what, it may be further asked, c iiiaus these cells to grow in this abnormal way? The only answer possible us yet is that it is the result of somo stimulus applied to the colls.

Mr Z. F. Vaughan, a citizen of Los Augelos, has discovered a means of tempering gold, says the Liverpool Post. He has been at his experiment some twenty years, he says, and has apent quite a 'fortune at it. Now that he has succeeded, he has made a hypodermic needle of tho substance, and has presented it to the local museum. Mr Vaughan also claims that be can temper silver and copper, .:ud that he is able to make eveu razors and carving knives of these metals. Pocket knives of gold are to be made for young ladies, and complete sets of cutlery can be made from a thousand pounds upwards. President Roosevelt is to be presented with one of the first sots.

The many men and women who use type writers because they do not wish their handwriting recognised will, says the Daily Mail, be astonished to hear that their identity cannot be disguised by this deviae from the expert. In a Court case some I tvpe-written words on a newspaper cutting and certain letters were found to have been printed by the same machine, and a Daily Mail representative who mentioned this fact to Mr JR. T. Nicholson, the manager of the Remington Typewriter Company, was informed that it was largely due to the question of personality. The style and alignment of the let tering point to the make of machine 1 usod, and such apparently unimportant points as the spacing be tween sentences, the size of the margin, and methods of punctuating ,and concluding letters are all factors by whiob it is a simple matter to detect the writer.

Mr H. E. Kugelmaun, a visitor to Christohurcb, has made some interesting suggestions as to the possibility of developing some small industries. Mr Kugelmaun is a member of a large American firm of botauic druggists, and he explained thats-druggists make use of some very homely commodities in large quantities. These commodities have found a market of some? proportion in the Australian States, and supplies are obtained from Aastralia by America. The bloom of red olover, dried, baled and pressed is much used, the output of Australia being something like fifty tons a year, and the price is 4d per lb. Farrow, practically a weed in this country, is also useful, and the plant, dried when in full bloom, commands, a price of £lB per ton. Rib grass, similarly.dried, is another on tbe list of druggists' materials, and is worth as much as £l2 per ton. The last mentioned by Mr Kugelmaun was the bete noir of gardeners, the übiquitous, irrepressible dook. Tbe root, sliced and dried, is largely used, and the price made by this common cause of cursing is no less than £2B per ton