TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8171, 29 June 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Obviously there ia still something unsatisfactory about the method of appointing* teachers at present in vogue, says the Otago Daily limes, otherwise the procedure' witnessed in the case of the appointment of a head master at the Caversham Sohool would not have been necessary. Six names were apparently submitted in order of merit, as usual, to the Sohool Committee, and last on the list came that of tbe teacher whom the Committee, for various good reasons, desired to honour with the appointment. The outcome was a speoial resolution frcm the Committee praying the Board to appoint that applicant in preference to all others, and a memorial signed by numerous parents in tbe diatriot interested supporting the Committee's attitude. After free discussion of the matter the Board decided by a majority of four votes to three that the Committee's request was reasonable and appointed the applicant ia question, whose record showed he had been in the service of the Board 29 years—eleven years or more as first assistant at Cavevsham Sohool. Prior to his service there he had been a pupil teacher, head master of a small country sobuol, relieving teacher, and assistant in various city aohoois. Yet this is a record of service which seßmingly was in the eyes of some members of the' Board not a sufficient apprenticeship for the position of head master of a large city school.

St. Helena, that lonely fragment of an anoient volcano, is to be allowed to keep her little garrison of British troops for a few months longer. She can ill afford to lose any part of her population, for the allurements of an Atlantic residence 1,200 miles from the nearest continent are not overpowering. Perhaps, however, if it were generally kuotvn that St. Helena had no public debt ita popularity as a fashionable watering-place might rise to the level of 1899, when the Boer warriors built up their shattered constitutions under the influence of its healthy climate. For the palmy days of the island one must go back to the time when the Suez Canal was unheard of and vessels bound to and from India mßde it a port of call, and filled the uockuts of the islanders with gold. Now they are driven to the harder, if more exciting, industry of bunting the wnale and cultivating the potato pursuits which maintain in decent comfort a community of something like 5,000 people.

Dr Anderson, who for some years occupied the position of Government Health Officer for Marl borough, interviewed on the subject of the outbreak of typhoid fever at Blenheim, said:- "1 have not the slightest hesitation iu ascribing it to oysters. The history of every case thut has been or is now under treatment, shows tbat the patient partook of oysters in an uncooked conditiou. whilo no persons living under similar conditions with, and consuming the same ordinary food, as the sufferers, but who abstained from oysters, have been affeoted. In all oases of typhoid, or enteric, the cause has to be looked for in some form of uncooked food; milk salads, oysters, etc., and there is not the slightest doubt about the origin of all oases that have been under observation this time. Moreover, the circumstances are virtually identical with those that attended the former serious visitation some three or four years ago." On the present oooasion, Dr Anderson is satisfied that, aa before, the evii originated at Picton, in oonneotion with the treatment of the oysters, which are kept in sea-water until wanted for consumption.

Of all nice things in the confectionery line the nicest Bhoold surely be the wedding-cake. Baored to the happiest of occasions, it should he as good to eat as it is to look at. It oomes as a shook, therefore, to learn on the authority of the Bakers' Times, Loudon, that in the weddingoake may lurk the deadly evil of consumption. Our English contemporary explains that this startling conditions of things is brought about by a "pernicious habit of some oake decorators in cleaning the ends uf their piping tubes with

their lips." The piping tube is tbe instrument with which the decorator traces in coloured liquid sugar the devices on the cake. We are rightly told, therefore, that if the "ornanaenter of wedding cakes is a consumptive he will by licking his tube convey the germ of his disorder to the sugar-work on top of the cake. The latter, of course may then be cut up and distributed to large numbers of young people of an age l \that is "very ausoeptible to infection." It Is altogether a most unpleasant thing to contemplate from any point of view. We hope, says an English paper, cake-makers will resDond to the appeal of the trade organ "to put a stop in tneir establishment to the practioe of licking the piping tubes," especially as a wet-cloth clears them better thau the lips. Australia, it adds, it appears, will not permit consumptive persons to be bakers at all, and in this direction we should 'do well to take a leaf out of the colonial book.