GENERAL NEWS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3269, 14 July 1911, Page 2

GENERAL NEWS.

At a dinner given by Mr Dalziel to the Prime Minister! (Mr Asquith), Harry Lauder,. the Scottish humorist, after singing and telling some stones, related how he began as a pit hoy in a Scotch mine. It was his duty to drive the ponies carrying loads of material to the pit’s mouth.. In graphic language he described the conditions of these hapless animals, some, as he put it, red from head to hoof” owing to contact with narrow low passages in the pit they have to creep through. The Legislature had. recognised the evil to the extent of systematising inspection before the ponies were sent down. In the mellow Lowland brogue that marks his speech (says Sir Henry Lucy m the Svdney Morning Herald), the ex-pit boy said what is wanted is not inspectors at the pit’s mouth, but inspectors m the pit’s depth, where they may see what terrible things go on. At the close of this unexpected “turn” the Prime Almister heartily shook hands with the advocate of the ponies’ wrongs, and assured- him of his warmest sympathy. Other members were equally interested m this revelation of unsuspected doings in dark places. It is exceedingly probable that a word thus quaintly spoken m season null bear fruit.

Professor William Stirling delivered an address at the Royal Institution, London, on “Biology and the Cinematograph.” The ’cinematograph had, he said, been applied with conspicuous success to the study of the flight of insects by AI. Lucien Bull, of the Institute Alarey. Paris. 'When it was remembered said the professor, that the movements of the wing of the common fly occurred at the rate of 330 vibrations per second, the bee 190, tlie wasp 110, and tlie dragon fly 28, it would be seen that there were many technical difficulties to be overcome. M. Pull, by means of bis “elect ro-stereo-chrono-photo-graph,” had been able to take photographs of a moving object,by means of an electric spark at tlie rate qf .2000 impressions per second on a sensitised film. M. Bull had also photographed the passage of a bullet through a soap bubble.

A long line of grey walls, broken here and there by battlemented towers ana topped by the white buildings of the Sultan’s Palace and a few minarets —such is the traveller’s first view of Fez as he approaches the capital of Morocco by the main caravan road. It is an unattractive approach, though in the spring, when the whole country is verdant with young crops and carpeted with wild flowers,, the scene is not lacking in charm; and on a clear day one can even see, far away beyond the city and the hills, the unexplored snow-peaks of tlie northernmost branch of the great Atlas 'Range. It as an ideal site for a city ■ (writes tlie Tangier correspondent of “The Times”), and Mulai Idris, its founder and patron saint, did not err in fixing upon it for Lis capital when, early in the ninth century, A.D.. lie laid its foundations.