TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8369, 28 February 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Dr. Danysz, who is conducting rabbit extermination experiments at Broughton Island, anticipates that his time will be fully occupied till October next in working out the tests. He has to battle against different climatic conditions in Australia, and variation in the constitution of the Australian rabbit has also to be considered. Dr. Danysz hopes to reduce the question of rabbit extermination in Australia to an exact science, and in order to achieve that end a step only at a time in his investigation is essential. An official report will shortly be submitted to the Government.

The Customs Department at Sydney have received a report from Mr Jee Hing, chairman of the New South Wales Chinese Anti-Opium League, on the opium smoking care plant. The report says that the plant has now been known for nearly two years as a cure for the opium habit. Its properties in this direction were thoroughly recognised after numerous practical experiments some twelve months ago by the Shanghai Anti-Opium Society. The plant is a common one all over China, and blooms on three separate stalks three times a year. The Shanghai society claim that thousands of people have been cured by the use of it in from three to four days, and that once a cure has been effected the erstwhile victims have no desire whatever for opium. The smell of it is nauseating to them.

It is noteworthy that several of the most experienced sportsmen of the upper class in England, though themselves little in the habit of betting, are agreed that while gambling as a popular vice may be restricted, it cannot be eradicated, and that any drastic attempt to stamp it out would be worse than useless. There is practically a recognition of this view in the latest addition made to the law on the subject, an Act introduced by Lord Davey and passed after much hesitation and enquiry. It only prohibits the business of the common betting touts in streets, roads, at the seaside and other similar resorts. Its application is specifically withheld from "any ground used for the purpose of a racecourse' for racing with horses, or adjacent thereto, on the days on which races take place." Nobody seriously expects much result from the Act. Sir Walter Gilbey expresses the opinion of many sportsmen of his class by saying that it would be better at once to legalise the totalisator, and make it, as it has been made in Continental countries and in some of the British States, a means of raising revenue for charitable and other purposes.

Generally speaking the necessity that children should be educated in classes at all is to be deplored in proportion to the size of such classes, says the Otago Daily Times. The more numerous the pupils composing a class the less can the individual mental needs of each child be studied. On the other hand, a good point about such education lies in the stimulus of competition that it provides, but even this only tends to make the lot of the slow pupil more unsatisfactory. Still, that children should be taught collectively is unavoidable. The question that naturally emerges, then, is as to the extent to which that teaching might be improved. The suggestions made by Mr E. C. Purdie, of Auckland, at the recent conference of school inspectors had an important bearinsr on this question. Mr Purdie's idea is that all the pupils in classes over the Third Standard should be taught in the same school. Using Auckland City to illustrate his meaning, he indicated that at present the pu]#s in Auckland and suburbs who were in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth.Standards in nineteen schools numbered something under three thousand. According to his view, these pupils should be taught in, say, three central schools, where a system of grad ing according to the'ability of the pupil could be carried out with a prospect of success on a comprehensive basis.