TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8326, 7 January 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The Hon. R. McNab, the Minister for Lands, has mapped out a long and arduous campaign in support of the Government Land Bill. On Tuesday week next he ,will speak at Christchurch. This meeting will be preliminary to a campaign throughout the Canterbury district. This week Mr McNab hopes to undertake a visit to the Wairarapa:. So far as arrangements have been completed at present, he hopes to speak at Carterton on Wednesday, at Pahiatua on Thursday, and at Eketahuna on Friday, but it is possible that some alteration may yet be made in this programme. Afterwards the Minister may be able to visit his own district, and then he anticipates leaving Wellington for Auckland, where he will spend a month. Two weeks will be occupied in studying the needs of the north, and the remainder of the time will be - devoted to the southern part of the province.

An ingenious telegraph and cable code has been devised by Mr Walter Cooke, of Boston, Lincolnshire (England), which will, he claims, reduce the world's telegraph bills by threequarters. "I can save 15s in the pound," says Mr Cooke. "As I have coded the alphabets as well as words, my code applies to any language. . It may be used for newspaper messages, stock [.exchange quotations, racing news, and anything you require. For example, take this messrige: "The riding of Ferreira and his party of eleven Boer marauders from the AngloGerman frontier into North Cape Colony is being taken too seriously, not to say scarily,in Capetown. ' There you have thirty-two words. In my code telegram there are only nine, for it would read: 'Paseimayba dakaumaxba baimoicapa railowia gavacai keadatars abaulasara coakader Ferreira!' In my system words do not stand for set phrases. Fractions and figures are expressed easily and simply in it, and Laffan's agency has already adopted one of my codes for intricate quotations. In one word —say, 'vatakaba'—l can send the arrivals of sixteen horses for a race and give the starters."

The Charleville correspondent of the Adelaide Register writes: —Mr Walter Rose, whose wonderful overland journey with cattle from northwest Australia to Charleville excited much interest, states that he is inclined to doubt the reports regarding the existence of quadrumanous aboriginals in the Northern Territory. Ho lias neither seen nor heard in his journeys in the interior anything to justify the belief that the four-handed missing link between the monkey and man exists in Australia. He thinks the stories arise through the exaggerated descriptions of deformations caused by leprosy, which is fairly common among the Northern blacks. With the object of eliciting information on this subject, Mr Rose intends this time, when he goes overlanding, to provide himself with photographs of monkeys, and will circulate these t among the wild t.-ibes. He thinks he should get on the track of the four-handed men if - any are to be found."

Juvenile smoking, it appears, is by no means a modern development. In an historical work just published by Miss Synge, dealing with the social life of England, she points out that smoking was practised long ago by children. It is even asserted that children were sent to school with pipes in their satchels, and that the schoolmaster made a pause in the course of lessons for all to smoke. In 1702 we get a glimpse of a ''sickly child of three years old filling its pipe of tobacco and smoking it as a man of three-score years, and after that a second and third pipe, without the least concern, as it had done for the past year." Even babies seem to have run up tobacconists' bills under good Queen Anne.