100 YEARS AGO
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
Harbour board at fault
IT was quite to be expected that sooner or later a strong public protest would be made against the conditions that have been permitted to prevail at the locality known as Lake Logan. Residents upon whose attention these conditions have unpleasantly forced themselves have shown in all the circumstances a remarkable patience. It is of little use raking up the past history of Lake Logan, in connection with which the reproach for so much illdischarged responsibility rests upon the Harbour Board. It is years now since an unsuccessful effort, with which this journal was associated, was made to save Lake Logan as a permanent aquatic city reserve. A small expenditure at that time would have sufficed to convert what even then, despite neglect, was a scenic asset of the city into one of the beauty spots of Dunedin, offering the best facilities for aquatic recreation. The Harbour Board, however, having control over the area, and being obdurate, could not or would not see its way to do anything but sacrifice the lake and prosecute its schemes of reclamation. The citizens had perforce to be content with a sop in the shape of promises that the reclamation of the lake would be expeditiously carried through to a finish, and that a portion of the area would be available as a reserve which would bring joy to their hearts. But what happened was really what might shrewdly have been anticipated. The reclamation work was abandoned when half completed, the operations of the Harbour Board were transferred to another area, and the halfreclaimed lake has remained ever since an eyesore, suggesting stagnation and threatening pestilence. In the face of the large sum which the board has spent in the upper harbour on operations that were undertaken later than the work at Lake Logan, the plea of financial inability on the part of the board to go on with this particular undertaking is not very convincing.
Wireless telephony
Astonishing disclosures of the recent achievements of wireless telephone were made by Dr Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, in a speech to the Canadian Club at St. Catharine’s, Ontario. ‘‘If the telephone has reached its extreme limits, what next?’’ said Dr Bell. ‘‘I cannot say what next, but I can tell you of something that happened in Washington a few weeks ago. The telephone has been applied to wireless, and a man in Arlington, just across the river from Washington, talked with a man on the Eiffel Tower in Paris by telephone without wires. But that is not all. A man in Honolulu heard the conversation! From Honolulu to the Eiffel Tower is 6000 miles, one third of the circumference of the globe. Does this not mean,’’ he added, ‘‘that we can talk from any part of the world to any other without wire?’’ Dr Bell, in detailing the development of his telephone, stated that a few days previously he had whispered a message from New York to Chicago — a distance of about 900 miles — and had received a whispered reply.
Ducks scattered
Following the last shooting season innumerable pairs of grey ducks took up their quarters among the willows and on lagoons in the Clutha basin above Cromwell, and the season’s hatching was the best known for a great many years. — ODT, 24.1.1918.