HINTS FROM HANSARD.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 548, 28 August 1869, Page 2

HINTS FROM HANSARD.

GEOLOGISTS OX GOLD. The Hon. Mr Mantell: There was one very safe way of expressing an opinion. If a geologist was asked if there was gold in a certain district, he would say he had very grave doubts about it; and then, if it turned out that there was gold, he could say that he had never denied it; and if it turned out that there was none, he could say " Well! I never said there was." A lawyer always had recourse to that plan before he looked the matter up, for he would not like to stake his professional reputation on such an opinion. FLAX MANUFACTURE. Mr Graham : In the preparation of flax there was a possibility of some chemical process being matured by which machinery might bo dispensed with. He had two specimens of flax sent \vp to him the other day by ono of his constituents, who appeared to have solved tho difficulty. Ho showed them to several persons who were judges, and also to Dr Hector, who said that, excepting the finest Native dressed flax, ho had never seen any which could compare with those specimens; and ho must say that his own experience corroborated that statement. The two samples were dressed by one and the same solvent. After the flax had been prepared, the person ho referred to found a means of precipitating the gum from the solvent, which was used a second time with the same suecess ; and he was now making experiments with a view to utilizing tho precipitated gum, and, if he were successful, the fibre could be prepared at an infinitesimal expense, by reason of the commercial value of the gum. GOVERNMENT POLICY ILLUSTRATED. Major Heaphy : The policy brought forward and elaborated by the Government reminded him of an essay of Elia, which described a gentleman rather given to romancing, who bad a servant always standing behind his chair, to remind him when he exceeded the bounds of credibility in his narrations. On one occasion he declared that he had killed a tiger in India with a tail sixteen feet long. John immediately gave him a tap on the shoulder. " Well," he said, " it might have been fifteen feet long," and the taps continued until at last the tail became so diminished, that he turned round and said, in an angry tone, " Why, John, you won't let the tiger have a tail at all!" He (Major Brown) did not know whether it was to come to that, but it seemed to him to be an alteration in the tail itself, a cutting off in one part and putting it on in another. It reminded him of the soldiers of the 99th Eegiment, who enlisted into the 65th. In the one case the crest was a tiger with the tail down, and in the other with the tail up, so that they had to cut the tiger off their caps, and reverse it, with the tail in the air. That was what was being done with the Government policy. The Government came down first with a policy in which the tiger's tail was down; it was a purely defence policy, and the troops were only to do garrison duty. The " garrison " was now completely knocked out in the amendment of the honorable member for Clive; the tail was in the air, and the troops were to be actively employed in the field.