WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2933, 25 June 1888, Page 2

WELLINGTON.

(From Our Own Correspondent)

Early Closing, The two most exciting topics liero just now are influenza and petitions, Fifty per cent of our inhabitants have a tine healthy cold, and the balance have a petition yawning open fot\.j|gnatures, Some are petitions in, $»!.• of closing shops at six p.m., and otlfea aro petitions in favor of keeping them open, These documents afford large and wholesome recreation to the youth of Wei lington who stroll round signing either or both of the petitions with strict impartiality, signing the same petition frequently in the course of one day, and signing it under a variety of names. A pretty general , impression obtains amoug the nonshopkeeping portion of the community that while employes should be released at a certain regulated hour, it is an impertinent interference with the . • liberty of the subject to force a tradesman who attends to his own shop to shut up before it suits him so to do. Successive New Zealand Governments aro falling into the fatal mistake of imitating Grandmotherly Legislation. Ere long some brilliant law-giver will want to decide what we shall have for dinner. Toomuch GovernmenluiM-tlie curse of this country, . ?

The Premier rftill continues, I regret to say, inilisposeJ, and is not likely to put in a parliamentary appearance, this week. His illness is not supposed to be at all serious, simply a development of the influenza which is raging like a lion in the city. In Sir Harry's absence, matlers are rather tame in the House, It is said that a section of Sir Harry Atkinson's erstwhile followers wish him to accept the Chiltern Hundreds in the shape of the Agency General, in order l hat Mr Bryce may come in as a leader. Mr Bryce would doubtless be supported in such a capacity by a number of members j whether he altogether "strong enough" for position is a different question. Infection froji Animals. Just now, when nearly every tenth adult has some patent new disease that he desires to introduce to the rabbits, one or two facts inay be mentioned, the consideration ot which probably will not—induce theseJßhusinsts to take pause. One of - these facts is that fivo children in one household in Naples recently died from malignant diptheria, contracted by ' drinking rain water collected from a housetop frequented by pigeons. The pigeons in question had diptheria, and pigeons are generally subject to that terrible disease. In the case mentioned the rain water had been filtered, but filtration is powerless to aS'ecfc the diptheria germ. The next fact is that Drs'Wilkinson and Bird have recently been investigating an outbreak of diptheria at Linton, Victoria, and found tliat domestic fowls, which had liad access to the water supply of the family affected, had suffered" from a disease Chicken Cholera.

Pondering these matters, I anvinduced to ask what difference there M between M. Pasteur's so-called Chicken' l Cholera and true Asiatic Cholera ? My own belief is that there iijitoly a difference of stage or development, and that " Chicken Cholera" is simply one phase of the germ which when, let us say better grown, would communicate cholera to an adult. Nothing is better established with regard to Asiatic cholera than tliH, viz., that tho disease exists in certain stratas of air. For instance, in Ahmednuggur, in the Bombay presidency, Cholera, some twenty years ago, appeared with tolerable regularity every third year. The year before a "Cholera year." there were invariably a few cases oFAsiatic among children only; an adult was never touched to iuy recollection, except in one case when a soldier had, while drunk, fallen from his cot on to a stone flooring of the bungalow, and had thus slept in the strata of ait- in which the cholera germs existed. During a visitation of" Children's Cholera" the natives would not sleep outofjbors or at least moved their charpoys'qf a position that the mouth of the sleeper would be at least five feet above tile earth. The year succeeding a proper " Cholera Year," the geruis appeared X have ascended, and the kites and crows' died in great numbers from Cholera. In the Crimea, every old sailor knew what was meant by the "Cholera : Cloud." wioutWn passed over

ships, men aloft would bo seized with tlio disease, and havo to bo lowered to the deck in bowlines, whilo thero were 110 seizures at the time among the deck lia&. From all of which, and many more facts, for which I have here no space, largue that what might be merely "Chicken Cholera" ono year, might re-appear the next as "Children's Cholera," and possibly visit U3 the year after as ummstakuablu Asiatic. My facts may have a very unscientific smack about them but they are fids, nevertheless. Plti.S A correspondent, in the current number of tlio Australasian, writes: "Dairying and the keeping of pigs work well together, and it is an interesting fact that pigs can be reared

and fattcnrcl entirely upon milk, In Victoria, uacon-curcrs state that in

fattening pigs they ought to be finished AJ off upon peas, grain, or somo kind of hard food, otherwise the pork is not iirm enough, This view is held by curers all over the Colony, and farmers have generally endorsed it. I could not say what the quality of Illawarra bacon is, but I know that there are several curing establishments there, and that nearly all of the pigs are fattened upon milk without any hard foMS" At a certain New Zealand Dairy Factory which I visited a year or two ago, they threw away the milk!