TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8359, 16 February 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

"It is to Canada that the British colonies owe their constitution as States," said Mr Justice Chapman, at a mayoral banquet at Christchurch, recently, "and there is no jcircum' stances of which I am more proud than my descent from one of the Canadian patriots of 1830. It requires a great deal of now to trace back the growth of the colonial constitutions, because we bave no book that really tells us the history of the colonies. A man cannot trace the constitutional history of the. Empire unless he fills his library with volumes and spends half of his life reading them. It is a pity that some Historian does not arise and tell us in simple language what that history has been."

Wireless telephonic communication between Berlin and London will be an achievement of the near luture, according to Professor Slaby, and he regards it as not improbable that

he'may ultimately be able to ring-up New York. There can be no question as to the result of his first effort to adapt the principle of wireless telegraphy to the more convenient process of talking through the air. Several officials of the German postal .department were present when conversation was transmitted by the new method from Berlin to Nauen, a distance of 25 miles. Messages spoken by the Under-Secretary of the post office are stated to have been heard "loudly and distinctly" at Nauen; the test was, in short, completely satisfactory, as was also another carried out later over a distance of three miles within the city area of Berlin.

Among the passengers by the steamer Kent, which arrived recently from Durban (says the Sydney Daily Telegraph), were 35 Australians, returning home after a futile endeavour to achieve success in South Africa. The bulk of them are mechanics, ' and the story of their failure is in many instances most pitiable. Not a few of them reached Durban penniless, and were allowed to work their passages to Sydney on the Kent. Several had lost everything they possessed before they left Johannesburg, and were obliged to trudge on foot all the way to the seaport —a distance of about 800 miles. Of the 35, 26 are from Sydney, eight from Melbourne, and the remaining one from Adelaide. They have decided to begin over again in Australia.

Opinions favourable to Dr Mason's scheme for the medical inspection of school children were given by a number of school teachers and doctors interviewed by a Lyttelton Tides reporter. "Here is an instance," said one doctor. "A wealthy father and mother brought me their boy recently and said he had been unwell for some weeks past, but as the school examinations were on, they had waited until these were over. I found that the boy's temperature was 104deg., and that he was suffering from acute tuberculosis. I sent him to private hospital at once, but he was dead witllin a week, in spite of the fact that he had come top in his class. Now, a medical inspector visiting the school that boy attended, days or even perhaps weeks and months before, would have observed the child's condition,s and probably have, by his recommendation to the parents, been the means of saving the boy's life." "I must say," added the speaker, "that I think it absolutely essential for the medical inspectors to be debarred from private practice,'! and for this reason, if for no other, they should be highly-paid men; per annum is an absolutely inadequate salary, considering the responsibility of the position. The position is much more responsible than that'of Inspector of Hospitals or District Health Officer."