TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8241, 20 September 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The conditions of the competitun for the trophy presomted by the Gordon Highlanders to thtf riflemen of Australia and Now Zealand have been approved. The prize will nevor become the property of any individual State, but will be hold by a winning team until it is defeated. Competitions will be fired annually between teams of eight men each and a commander (who wili shoot). Uniform is to be compulsory. The matoh must be fired at least once in six years in New Zealand, and will tane place wherever the Com mon wealth Matoh is tired. Ths arrangements for the next few yea re will thus be:-—I9GG, Tasmania, 1907, Queensland, 1908, South Australia; 1909, New South Wales; 1909, New

Zealand (same year as New Soutb Walefc, so as to avoid interference with tbe continuity of tbe Commonwealth Match); 1910, West Australia; 1911, Victoria. Teams will be drawn ap 1,200 yards from target trench, and advanced with trailed arms at three paoes interval. On tbe appear* anoe of tbe targets competitors will bait and fire as many rounds as possible until tbe targets disappear, when an advanoe and bait will be made as before. A third advanoe will be made iu tbe same way. Tbe fourth will be at tbe doable, again baiting and tiring, Teams will then be marched to tbe flank by the umpire, and on tbe appearanoe of the targets will fire as before. Magazines must not be used, and forty rounds of ammunition will be issued to eaoh man. Tbe targets will appear five time altogether at irregular intervals and unknown distances, and eaoh bit is to count one point.

The Washington correspondent of a London paper says:—Tbe Immigration Department has been investigating the means employed by Japanese to evade the immigration laws of the United States, a report is now issued showing that hundreds of Japanese have successfully operated by travelling via Honolulu. Advertisements were iuserted in Japanese papers offering high wages for workmen. Hundreds replied, and the agents working the scheme carefully coached their clients in return for substantial fees. Passports to Honolulu being freely given, while those to the mainlnd of America were difficult to procure, the men went to the former piace, where a hotelkeeper, who was the centre of the soheme, aided tbem to get tlokets for the United States, charging a commission. Four ships in particular were suocessful in this kind of smuggling, and one is known to have brought in nearly 2,000 immigrants from Honolulu at a heavy profit during the last year. It was the quarrel of the hotelkeeper and the agents in Japan which caused the discovery of the soheme, for, the supplies of labourers beooming irregular, the ship went on a trading trip to Alaska instead, and the change of plan led the immigration officials at Seattle and Honolulu to investigate.

"The bitter cry of tbe Middle Classes," writes the Westminster Gazette, has been uttered in a very unfortunate form in Vienna. A Bill has passed tbe Lower House in the Reichsratb, and will probably pass the Upper House likewise, forbidding/ any tradesman to undertake the making or preparation of any wearing apparel of any kind, including hats and boots, unless he is a member of one of the tradesmen's societies of the oity, which correspond to some extent to the mediaeval guilds. Its aim is to proteat the small working tailors and bootmakers against the competition of the "bespoke departments" of the large stores, whose owners are organisers rather than master tailors or bootmakers, and can scarcely qualify for both the latter funotions in any uase. The Bill is, of course, a fresh manifestation of the wellmeant solicitude of certain parties in Germany aGd Austria for • the smali tradesman, which is exhibited in the Prussian tax on the turnover of "universal providers' " stores in that country, in order to give their struggling rivals a chanue.

What is raidum, and what are its qualities? These questions were debated by the British Association at York on Monday, August 6fcb, and the opinions were many and varied. Two years ago it was suggested that there must be enough radium in the globe to account: for tbe internal heat, but Mr Strutt has recently examined a large number of rocks and bis conclusion is that they all aontain much more radium than would maintain thn earth's internal heat if the earth were rook throughout. The interior does not contain radium, only the rooky orust, and he ualculates its thickness as forty-five miles, with a heat of 1,500 degrees Centigrade. (And yet there are . people to-day who complain of 80 in the shade!) But now sir Wililam Crookes sprang a surprise on the meeting. He bad, bo said, put a quantity of bromide of radium in a brass box, an equal quantity of inert matter in another brass box, and both on ice If the raidum gave out beat the ice beneath it should have melted more quickly than the ice under the inert matter, hut ic did nothing of tbe kind. The gentlemen who have adopted the view that the heat of the earth and of the sun is partly due to radium were taken aback; but Sir Willinm Ramsay enrae to the rescue. For three weeks ho had watched two thermometers, one of which contained a little radium, and all the time the thermometer with the radium recorded three-quarters of a degree higher than the one without tbe new element. Evidently further investigation is needed.