MISCELLANEOUS.

Waikato Times, Volume VIII, Issue 436, 6 April 1875, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

: We take the following biography of Sir Charles > Lyel', the eminent geologist, from " Men of theN Time :"— Lyell, Sir Charles, Bart., D.C.L., F.R.5.,. • [eldest sen of the late Charles Lyell, Esq., of Kinj uordy, do. Forfar. He was born in 1797, and was. j educated at JjJxeter College, Oxford, where he graduated M.A. in|B2l, and whs subsequently called to the bar. "He -was appointed *a Deputy-Lieutenant ' for Forfarah ire in s 1831 * and was President of the Geological Society in- 1836-7, and agnin in 1850-1. He was knighted in 1848, and received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford in 1855. Sir Charles is the author of r>everal important geological works, and many papers i» scientific journals. His first work, "The Principles of Geology," w*s published in 1833, and has reached a ninth edition ; this was. followed by "Elunent* of Geology," in 1838, subsequently reprinted under the title of " A Manual of Elementary Geology," which has passed through several editions. The principal ; object of these treatises wai to show that th«s early j progress of geology was retarded by a prevailing belief that the former changes of the- earth and its inhabitants were the effects of causes differing in intensity, and some of them in kind, from those now j in operation ; whereas the true key to the interpre- . tation of geological monuments was to le found, acI cording to the author, in a kn owl< dpe of the changes I now going on in the organic and inorganic worlds. ' In 1841 he published, under the title of "Travel* in North America," a narrative of a visit which he paid to North America for the purpose ot examining the geological structure of that continent. In 1845 he published his "Second visit to the United States," in which he treats of the social as well as the geological 6hftiacteristicB of America. His treatise on " Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks on Theoiies of the Origin of Specie* by Variation " appeared in February, 1863, and before the end of the same year had reached a third edition. He was r created a Baronet in 1864. Ilie " New York Tribune " states that between San Francisco and the Cliff House, and also in other places, the sand of the beach is/wafted inland badly, and the reclamation of sand^dofrns is becoming important. The Paris CjommissiofierVof San Francisco are taking the matter mto hantl, and, like wise people, they are studyiuj nature^Kmethod of reclamation and deriving 'useful hmts ijom it. As the old sand hills show, Nature there does the work nuinly by means ot twofenrubby species of Lupine. j The particular advantage |x>ssessed by these Lupine* , came to view when some deep cuttings were being made through one of those old sand formation* ; although the busheß seldom rose'abeye three feet in height, the roots were traced to it depth of more than 25 feet j and they also> extent! laterally in a corresponding way. Am itj is this deep growth of r.)ot which enables these plants to hold their own hi drifting sand, penetrating as they do into a stratum unaffeoted by drought, so, also, it is the looseness of the sand and gravel that allonfa tfce root to penetrate, so promptly And to fwrr The only thing needful in the way of help i» to prtfitet thegerminiting Lupine from being overwhelmed with aand »*-* ; the first, through the driving stottnn of winter and ~ spmg. That is done by towing barley with the 1 lupine seed ; this in ten or twelve days from so* ing gets strong and high enough to hold the drift ;" and by the time the barley dies off the lupine plant* have got their roots deep enough into the gro"rtd anjl their upward growth so well, above it as t< lax the soil effectually. On our easterh^coasV ai»ii" me " shores of our great lakes, these two Lupines would

commend another perennial plant of the san.e the "Terphosia Virgiuiana of botanist W iich effects sandy soils, and which on account o' its long, slender, and very tough roots, is in sotn p uts of the country call d catgut. These roota, runuing horizontally and far, would bind the shit I ig sand as effectually as certain sand-gr sses and s^ges, and which are used for the same purposes ii. Europe. There is a sand-willow on the Cal ' •rnuin coast .of insignificant height, the roots of which iav bepn^Mfl to extend to a distance of 120 feet \\\,m 'he pWc itself. A suggestion is made in n .Chicago newspap 1 which may probably tend to enlighten the moM ultra of Protectionists. It proposes that inanufac-turei-s, shopkeeps, importer and tr.iders generalh •hould, in making oit th«ir bill?-, s« pirate tin natural cost of the ariic'e ti >y nitke, sell, or e\ change, together with their own profit, from Hi protective impost aud accompanying chaiges, s< that consumirs might be able to appreciate tin magnitude of the burdens they bear in the shajx of indirect taxation. Our American cousin, representing the organ he has the honor of being connected with, speaks in this wise : — "A man who suffers from the duty does so without, in many case*-, knowing why. He buys a suit of d >mestic-m:ide clothes for $66, and grumbles at the tailor for the price, when he should inveigh against the tariff. If nis bill was. made out in this way : Cast of suit, plus profit, $40 ; bounty to protected manufacturer, $25 ; total, $65 ; he would at once appieciate the tax he was paving, He would be^in to doubt the wisdom of allowing one of his fellow citizens, because the latter manufactured cloth, to collect $25 extra off him whenever he bought coat, vest, and pantaloons. . If all his tailor and store bills were made out in this way, he would speedily become the vociferous opponent of what is called Protection. There can be very little doubt of it. And people would be greatly astonished, not ouly at th * amount of their contributions to the Treasury, but also at the sums levied upon them in the shape of fcjtfack mail by the protected interests. A Wonderful Horse. — Aft< r giving an account if a recent match at Newmarket l>etween the noted English racer, Prince Charlie, and a French horse named Peut-etre, (the winner of this year's Cambridgeshire Stakes), the lllust>ated London Neuts has the following :- *« Prince Charlie's victory created more enthusiasm than has never been witnessed on iS'ewmarket Heath ; and after Parry had weighed in, Mr. Jones his breeder and owner, who refused £10,000 for him, mounted and rode in triumph into the town, attended by Joseph Dawson and nearly every stable hoy connected with the Bedford Lodge establishment. During his four years on the turf, Prince Charlje has won twenty-five races out of twenty-nine, and secured stakes to the value of £13,543, and there can be no doubt that he is the grandest looking and the best horse the world ever saw. Prince Charlie is a six year old chesnu*. by/'Stockwell. Ihe man is a maniac, a deliberate suicide, who drinks tea, coffee, or ardent spirits of any kind, to induce him to perform a work in hand and when he feels too weak to go through with it without such aid. This is the reason 1 hat the majority of great orators and, public favorites die drunkards. The pulpit, the bench, the bar, the forum, have con tributed their legions of victims to drunken habits. The beautiful woman, the sweet singer, the conversationalist, the periodical writer, has filled but too often the drunkard's grave. Now that the press has become a great power in the land, when the magazine must come out on a certain day, and the daily newspaper at a fixed hour, nothing waits, everything gives way for the inexorable call for copy. Sick or well, disposed or indisposed, asleep or awake, that copy must come ; the writer must compose his article whether he likes it or not, and if^he is not in the vein for writing, he imst whip himself up bp the stimulus of drink. Some of the great^t writers of the century have confessed to > 4be £4giice, on urgent occasions, of taking a sip of brandy* l at the end of every written paper, or even often«r — Lord Byron at the end of every paragraph, sometimes ! , It may have escaped the general reader's notice that more men have died young, who have been connected with the New York press, withint ten years, and that too from intemperance, than in a|l other educational callings put together — young men whose talents have been of the very first order, and gave promise of h life of usefulness, honor, and eminence. The best possible thing for a man to do, when he feels too tired to perform a task, or too weak to carry it through, is to go to bed and sleep a week if he can ; this is the only true recuperation of brain power, the only actual renewal of brain forces, bf^ause during sleep the brain is in a sense of rest in a condition to receive and appropriate particles of nutriment from the blood which take the place of tho-e which have been consumed in previous labour, since the very act of thinking consumes, burns up solid particles, as every turn of the wheel or screw of the splendid steamer is the result of the consumption by fire of the fuel in the furnace. That supply of consumed brain substance can only be had from the nutriment particles in the blood which were obtained from the ibod eaten previously, and the brain is so constituted that it can best receive and appropriate to itself those nutriment particles during the state of rest, quiet, and stillness of sleep. Mere stimulants supply nothing in themselves — they only goad the brain, force it to a greater consumption of its substance, until that substance has been so fully exhausted that there is not power enough left to receive a supply, just as men are sometimes so near death by thirst and starvation, that there is Hot strength enough left to swallow anything, and all /is over. The capacity of the brain for receiving recuperative particles sometimes comes on with the rapidity of lightning, and the man becomes mad in an instant ; and in an instant falls in convulsions, in an instant losses all sense, and he is an idiot. It was under circumstances of this very sort, in the very middle of a sentence of great oratorical power, one of the most eminent minds ot the age forgot his idea, press his hand against his forehead, and after a moment's silence, said, " God, as with a sponge, lias blotted out my mind." Be assured, reader, i' there is rest for the weary " only in early and Abundant jdeep, and wise and happy aie they who have firmness enough to resolve that "By God's help, I will seek it in no other way." — Hall's Journal of Health. . Mr Herbert Spencer, says the Melbourne ArgtUt in his " Essays," maint».ins the theory of the spontaneous origin of fever. He has been unfortunate, however, in one of his instances, for be cities the case of the ship Wanata, which left Glasgow in 1852. Singularly enough, Mr Thompson, of South Yarra, was on board the vesiel in question, and in hiireoent work on Typhoid Fever, gives the following account of what took place. He says: — "The contagion came froro fever beds in Glasgow. The first man was ill while the vessel lay at anchor in the Mersey, before he- bad been one day on board, or before g pontaneQUJL. genesis of fever was possible. The patient, an: elderly -Highlander^ had- lodged two wee 2hp Gliwgow, an hit way to join the ship. I wmf with hiur and 600 other emigrants m a small steam packet from Glasgow to Liverpool. The moment the fever showed itself I, as surgeon superintendent, tried to land the man at Birkenhead depot ; but my effort was over-iultd by the port medical authorities, and the ship went to ea with the focus of contagion to thin out her livig freight, and jmzzle speculative biologists with •bcious theories about the cause of it. The man

tacked was a man in the adjoining berth, and ho too died on the fourteenth day. Fever then slowly 3 ueadfrom one to another, with no outburst amongst a numlier, as it would have burnt out had the poison bi.ni bred in foulness of over-crowding. Over a t maand souls were on lioard of a 1400 ton. ship* wi'h two deck , making isolation mi; os-nihle. By B 'Petitions efforts the fever Was kept in cneck, so far a* to enalJe everyone to goon deck when the pilot b »<irde d at the H ads. From the fa>- E ist intelligence reached London yestvd .y of the death of T'oung chih, the Moitu eh of t e Celestial Empire, it the age of scarcely 19. Tue youth i'u Empe'or nowdecaiaed was born » n the 27th o; A jjiil, 1856, according to European reckoning, •\ id succeeded to the throne on hit* father's death on t » « 21st of August, 1861, though he actually reigned oil lince em nth of F bni rv, 1373, the date o.' .vuic* he waa formally declared ol age. T'oung-chih dm mod in October, 1872, Alou-te, daughter of vh'oung-khi, Rector of the Academy of Pekin, who wts thereupon c evnted to the rank and dignity of a Duke. A writer in Chamber's Encyclopwuia ;' states that "in he centralized, autoratic Government of C lina, the Rmperor is absolute in the Empire, the G >vernor in the Pro. ince, and the magistrate in the province. The Emperor claims no heredi ary Dtvine nijht. and is not always the eldest son of the pre- j ceding monarch ; the "noblest son is nominated, but , his right to the throne as the Teeiwtze or Tien-tze, •♦son of heaven," and the Fung-tien, "divinely ap- ' p >inted," can only be established by good q >vernment, in accordance with the principles laid down in the national sacred books. If, on the contrary, he violates these principles, the people firmly believe that Heaven signifies, by unmistakable signs, that their ruler is not its chosen representative." The Emperor is assisted in governing by two councils : — 1, The Inner of Privy Council, composed of six high officials, three ol whom are Chinese and three Mantchus, also ten assistants. The four senior Ministers excercise funtijns corresponding to those of an En lish Prime Minister. 2, The General or Strategical Council, which closely resembles our ( 'abinet, beirt compose I of the most influential officers in the capital, who excercise high legislative and executive duties. The decisions of the Eniperor in Council are regularly published in the l ekin GazeU. MiMartin tells us in the " Statesman Year Book " that the area of the Chinese Empire, including its dependent countries of Thibet, Mongolia, Ac, amounts to upwards of 199,000 square miles, containing a p tpuiation estimated at little short of 300 mi lions of souls. The " New York Tribune " says :— The strikes in this city are all virtual failures. For every man who quits work there are tan idle ones eager to take his place at any sort of wages. It may be some days yet betore the strikers see the mistakes into which they have been led by blind leaders. But then it may be found that the vacant places are permanently tilled. We have a hard winter before us, with less to encourage employers than any season for the past ten or twelve years. Every trade is full of unemployed workmen. There are two idle men standing ready and anxious to take evf-ry place that may be vacant, and the question with thousands is not just how high wages they can got, but whether they can get any wages at all. Employers are often in an equally hard case, and the question with them is not whether they can can afford to pay the present wages, but whether they can afford to pay any wages. To refuse offered work and inaugurate strikes in such a season is madness. The estimates of the actual number out of w^rk in the city are various, some placing it as high us 90,000, but the more moderate cutting these figures down to 50,000 or 60,000. The lower ! estimates are sufficient to give warning of the approaching destitution. Besides thousands who are absolutely without work, thousands now engaged upon jobs are working upon short time, or will very soon be left without anything to do."