Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 20, 21 May 1908, Page 23

Notes

Sentiment and Motive Power At a meeting of the Hawke's Bay Presbytery on May 14, the Rev. Mr. White congratulated all present on ' the great progress of sentiment ' in the matter of the volunteer religious instruction of children in the public schools. The half-hour a week devoted to this work in some of the schools ' doubled ', said he, ' the present religious instruction of the young, but it fell far short of the intensity and thoroughness they had known in Scotland. He could not rest until all the ministers went into the schools daily ' ' The great progress of sentiirent ' mentioned by the Rev. Mr. White will be welcomed by Catholics, more especially if it develops sufficient moti\e energy or horse-power to move our separated brethren to do what our co-reli-gionists have been doing for a generation as a matter of course, and at great personal sacrifice, for the religious up-blringing of the young. We cordially in\ite the Reformed faiths to break up, by imitation of our example, the practical monopoly of religious education which Catholics have so long held in these countries. Some Catholic Biologists ' The real father of the evolution idea in modern times ', says the learned Dr. James J. Walsh in the ' Pilot ', ' was Lamarck, a Catholic. The greatest teacher in nineteenth century biology was Johann Muller, a .CathoKc. His great pupil, Schwann, father of the cell doctrine, was another Catholic. Nearly all the French workers in biology were Catholics. The greatest of recent biologists was Pasteur, whose monument, by 'his own diiection, is a Catholic chapel at the entrance . to the Institut Pastour, Paris, where Mass is said regularly for his sou.l and for the success of the work he founded.' • Conquest of the Air ' The daifly papers ha\ c, during the past few days, been giving accounts of the long flights which are said to have been achie\cd by the Wright brothers (Americans) in tHieir heavier-lhan-air ' -\ olor ' (as we may call it, using the easy term in\entcd by Father Benson in his ' Lord of the World '). Unless these flights be to a considerable extent flights of fancy, America may claim an easy first place in the matter of air-comqujest, bjotli by reason, of the lowness of horse-power employed, the lightness and manageaibpHity of their machine, and the length and height of their journey through the fields of atmosphere. Farman'is machine is, by comparison, an age behind th a t of the Wright brothers, if one may judge by recorded achievements. Farman, at latest reports, seems to be taking occasional jumps into the air on the Issy drallground outside Paris, and taking short swallow-flights around a circular course twenty or twenty-five feet above the ground. During bis latest soar, while turning, one of the wings of his aeroplane tripped in the ground, the machine came down with a bang, its timbers were Shivered, and Farman was thrown into the middle of the next week. His machine, as described in technical magazines before us, is a heavy structure, of enormous horse-power, and is so constructed that very high engine-speeds and rates of travel are necessary in order to keep it soaring even a moderate distance' over ground. When the speed drops a little (as in rounding bends) the machine dips, and, on the occasion mentioned above, Farman found himself in the position of the ' baby on the tree-top ' in the nursery rhyme— * when the bough bro'-^e, the cradle did fall, and down came baby, cradle, and all '. Thus far, there seems, however, to be more of promise than of actual achievement in the flying machine. But the practical volor of • the future, if it ever comes, will owe its success in part to the patient toil—even to the mistakes — of experimenters like Farman and the Wrights.