GENERAL NEWS

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 7 February 1913, Page 6

GENERAL NEWS

NO "STAIIOH" WANTED. Mr Harold Bogbie tolls in the January "Woman at Home" that when Or Ingram, the Bishop of Loudon, iirsc went as Bishop to the East End, lie discovered that the people regarded Jiim Avitli marked disfavour; they not only avoided him, they not only turned their backs upon ihim, but they openly and plainly manifested a vigorous disaproval. A friendly old woman told the reason of this enmity. "Bishop," she said, "it's your white shirt. Wo don't want no white-shirted gentry here. Cbuldn't you, now, wear a grey shirt and a dickey, same as our chaps do on Sunday?" From that hour the Bishop got rid of the starch from 'Jus shirts.

PLURAL OF "M.P." In a letter addressed to the ''New York Sun" a correspondent asks, "in tho name of propriety in abbreviation," why that journal describes a body of .members of Parliament as "M.P.'s" Ho asks, "For the plural of M. .P. would not the better form bo M.M.P., after the analogy of pp. for pages, LL..D. for doctor of laws, MSS. for manuscripts, and M.M. foi messieurs? If you prefer to regard the M.P. as a familiar name, to be turned into tho plural like any other word, you have a combination that is easy to pronounce but difficult to write satisfactorily." He describes the familiar way of writing M.P.'s as grotesque, and asks, "Why the ; postrophe? Or if the apostrophe be used whv the abbreviation point before it?"

DINOSOI'R WEIGHING THREE TONS. Among the ten tons of' fossils brought to Ottawa for the Victoria Memorial Museum by Mr Charles H Sternbcrg, the American explorer, who was engaged by the Canadian Government for explorations in Western Canada, were tho perfect skelearis of two primeval monsters found m the Hod Deer district. One of the skeletons, classified by 'Mr Sternberg as a duck bill dinosaur, weighs over three tons, and is 35ft. long. The ,->riod when this animal lived is estimated at three million years ago. The. other • huge skeleton is that of a trieerntops, of three-horn trace. It has a. skull 7ft. long, with horns over each eye and one at tho end of tho nose. liemains of tertiary lizards of enormous proportions were also found by Mi Sternberg, who expects to resume hi; explorations in the same region next June.

INTELLIGENCE IN WORMS. I As the result of a remarkable juries ) of experiments conducted by Professor 111 M. Yerkes, in the psychological cic- ' partment of Harvard College, it has j been demonstrated that angleworms J can think and 'remember (says the ; "Evening Standard"). The method which Professor Yerkes adopted was a« follows: —An angle or fish worm will always crawl out of a lighted place into a dark one. Knowing this, Professor Yerkes put the angleworm which he was experimenting with into a. glass dish in which were two dark holes. The right hand hole was merely an earth cavity. The left hand enc, however, contained a mildly charged i electric battery, tho object of which was to give the worm a shock in case he should desire to poke himself into it, According to last reports the ) angleworm had learned his lesson pretty well, and was continually t'oing to the, right when he was put into the glass dish.

I "HE WON IN A WALK." With his face unshaved, his etothos rather shabby looking, and of unkempt appearance generally, a well-kno;v:i •comedian stood outside the Grand Hotel, in the West End, on Saturday, offering five-poamd notes at Id each. Notwithstanding thai the same trick was: clone nlany years ago with sovereigns, people thought it was either an impudent attempt to gather in a row coppers for valueless pits of paper, or a little- joke -that some incorrigible /'humorist was trying to work off. Try ! as he might, tlie disreputable-looking * individual could not mako the pas-soi\> by believe that they were geiviine fivers he was giving away in this fashion. As they came along they would give the supposed faker a knowing look and pass 01 b little dreaming what a. good thing they had missed. Of the hundreds of pedestrians that passed during the ' twenty minutes , that the "sale" wa,s In progress' ) only two thought at good enough to risk a penny. Later on-, when those lucky persons made the discovery that they had secured genuine notes, they made a. wild rush back to the Ci.iu.nd, only to find that tlio philanthropist had vanished. HoJiad gone after having sold two :£(5 notes for 2d, but ho had won a substantial wager from a friend. The whole business was "the outcome of a bet. The comedian laid j a. wager with his friend that he would not .sell six of the notes in twenty minutes, and as he afterwards renin rkI ed, be won in a walk.

LORD KITCHENER. Lord Kitchener lias been elected a member of t'ho Egyptian Institute.. We thus follows the example -d all t'ho illustrious generals who have been connected with tlio Country, with the ■exception of Klober, who, through an

erroneous conception of what the in- ! stitutiou was, declined tho honour. J Jf the issuing of proclamations to the I fella boon fell to Lord Kitchener he 1 could. a,s has been pointed out, emul--1 ate Napoleon, and sign them 'Kitchener, Member of the Institute." Already lie is following in another direction in Napoleon's steps. He ordered a road to be made between Cairo and Alexandria, and now it i,s announced, on no less an authority than tho Un-der-Secretary of State for PubPe Works, that Jio is studying a plan for covering Egypt with a complete series of main roads. Tiie.se will bo undertaken by the Government itself, wh Ist the auxiliary ones will be laid by the Provincial Councils. It will give great satisfaction to every one (writes the "Pall Mall Gazette" correspondent), for, apart from the military htand- : point, such a system of roads will bo l of immense commercial value, as it j will open up districts that are latent ! through lack of communications; it ' will further develop others that are rt present dependent solely either on the river or the railway for transport, r.nd it will give this country an additional attraction in the eyes of the tourist, who at .present can rarely get off the beaten track or obtain any other view of Egyptian life than that to lie had from tho train window or steamer

deck. i Amusing stories of the strictness of tho Balkan censorship are beginning to appear in European papers: An American photographer wished to send a picture of some guns going through the town. It was stopped. ■ "I cannot send a photograph of somo guns; it is a secret that the Bulgarians have guns," ho wired to his editor, much to the annoyance of the j censor. At Mustapha Pasha the custom was after the war correspondent 'had written a dispatch to bring it to j tho censor, who held lii.s court in a room surrounded by a crowd of correspondents. The censor insisted that the correspondent should read tilio disi patch aloud to him. Then the cen- ! sor read-it-over again aloud to him 'to make sure that all heard. Pri- ' vato letters had to pass through the ■■ same ordeal, and one correspondent, [with a turn of humour, wrote an im- ' aginary private lottor full of tho most fervent love messages, which '■ was road out to a furiously blushing 'censor and to a batch of journalists, ■ who at first did not see the joke and 'tried to look a s if they were not lis.toning.

Referring to Britain's recent purchase of a German airship for the use of the Navy, a Berlin journal remarks that oven now, per contra, the German fleet includes a number of vessels that were, built in England. That is quite truo, as shown by a handsome-got-np Christmas present folio, "Kaiser Willieim IT. und die ; Marino," which has just been published at Berlin. Among other beautiful double-page coloured illustrations it gives the miniature frigate Royal Luise, a present from William IV. to the King of Prussia, in which the present Emperor and his brother Henry learned the elements of seamanship in the waters around Potsdam. The next British war-vessel to be transferred to Prussia were the 3Ggun frigate Thetis, the Rover, the Mosquito, and the 'Xioble, which is still used as a training ship for cadets. Then "there also was the Renown, which is now as a. gunnery ship at Willie!mshaven. For many years it was the custom for several Prussian officers to receive their training in our Navy, just as Turkish officers now go to Berlin for a term of educational service- in the Prussian army, ■ It is something of a landmark in

our history, remarks an English exchange, that the Dreadnought, after six vears' service, has been removed from" the First Battle Squadron. The arrival of Super-Dreadnoughts ha? left the public quite unmoved, and it will be interesting to see whether the official deposition of the Dreadnought from pride of place will have any effect on the phraseology of the man in the street, who has become so accustomed to the. word that he. is not likely to give it up easily. Here is a bit of good advice from America to business men : "Advertise. When ji duck lays an egg sho just waddles off as if nothing had happened. When a hen lays an egg there's a whale of a noise. The hen advertises." Hence the demand for hen's eggs instead of uncle's eggs. "The truly great, are modest, but in these days of advertisement the truly modest never became great," said a great man. But he didn't know the' story of the men ar.d the duck when he wrote that. A friend of mine met a mud-stain-ed soldier on a mountain e\d<\ who spoke perfect Knglish in a. most cultured way, writes a. correspondent of the Graphic. He was in n largo way of business in Mark Lane, E.G., where he used to wear a tall hat and frockcoat ami patent leather boots. But he had hurried back to Bulgaria, am! was living among peasants in sheepskins with naked bayonets, and nasty knives in their, hoots. For the spirit of nationality is stronger than the ties of wealth and ease. It is n sentiment which exists even in the Mam-mon-worship of the City. Dean Tngle soem.s on very doubtful ground when he laments "the decay of fear as a vital element in religion." Fear is the "vital element" of those religions which propitiate their deities by acts of cruelty, and keep their votaries in an atmosphere of superstition that defies all progress. It is surely only in proportion as nations rejoice in their religion instead of cowering under it that th.ey became fitted to do their share of the world's service. Tf Dean Tngle would consult the physiologists and psychologists upon the influence of fear on the human system, he would cease, we almostimagine, to yearn for a further infus- , ion of it in the temperament of the k day. . In connection with the suicides of * , two life-sentence prisoners at Maid-- ► i stone Gaol, the statement of a prison < doctor in the Daily Mail, to the effect , that, of all prisoners', murderers are * the "pleasantest and most interesting ► fwe have to deal with," will no doubt Ik i astonish many readers. It will also. [ I perhaps, surprise them to hear that ' 19 out of every 20 murderers have no recollection of the actual commission k. of the crime. They may admit their ' guilt, but of the. deed itself not the f slightest memory has remained. The fact is that murders are usually comrnltfed in a moment of mental abr uormalism; the impulse dies in the \ moment of Stsi fulfilment;, land the k, i.-nn becomes a pormal—nnd perhaps i bv no means criminal—ceature once ' more. Under these circumstances, it > is not to be wondered at that, to the I men at Maidstone, their life sentence ( seemed worse than death. Interesting details regarding the * construction of the Ounnrder Aq-it- > a.nia, which will be the woild's largest , steamer, were mentioned at a "Board rf Trade inquiry at Glasgow. Anpination was made by the Clyde LieJithouses Trust to ' deposit ' 1,000 000 cubic yards of dredged material upon a certain'area on the lower reaches of. the river. Tt was stated that the removal was primarily to permit of. the Aquitania being taken out to the open sen. The vessel is expected to" be launched in the spring, and by tae following year will be teady for comnn'ssein. She is 45.000 tens burJeu and it is intended to widen and deepen the Clye channelway. Mr Raobum, chairman of the Trust, st itod that the Aquitania was a bin problem nnd every hour of their time would bo required for the dredg.og. Several local authorities objected to the application, but after reass U'ing statements had been'ma do by the promoters those were withdrawn, and Cantaui Monro stated that he w ,:;\(1 submit his report to the Boar! of Trade » The question of national flags. which arose in the House of Common.-, during the Home Rule debate \,vis recently before the Courte. de Oa.-.s;i-tion, in France, and drew from ibo. tribunal a decision which incideuiaily involved the temporal sovereign l y nf the Pope. According t> Frencn Jaw only the' Tricolour, banners of tr.unicipalities, and flags, of foreign sovereign States, may bo publicly flown, and the authorities of Mans prosecuted one of the inhabitants for displaying the Papal flag during the Joan of Are festivities last year. The plea was put forward that the Hag was the emblem of the Pope's sovereignty and therefore, could he legally flown. The local Magistrate admitted this plea, and the case then went to the Courte do Cassation. The latter ir: bunal delivered a considered judgmendeclaring that, the Pope is not a -soy ereign, and, therefore, can have no national flac ; and, in addition, it v. as laid clown that it is an c ( " French law to rcU'r publicly to i!;e Pope as a- Sovereign. "But all civil authorities in France are not so punctilious, as those at Mans, ami th-* crossed keys on a white ground are still used in many parts of Franco bv devout Catholics.