Unknown Australia.

The old map of the world shows that New Zealand was not discovered at that time, and that little or nothing was known about Australia. It is remarkable that the great country of Australia should have remained so long undiscovered. Many maps published 400 or 500 years ago do not include Australia, but show open sea. Other cartographers in the same period show page 18 page 19 a huge continent covering the Antarctic Ocean and reaching up to where New Zealand and Australia lie.

One of the chief reasons why the old map-makers invented this southern continent was the common belief that there must be equal quantities of land in both northern and southern hemispheres in order to keep the world evenly balanced. As the area known to exist in the northern hemisphere was very much greater than that known in the south, the map-makers sketched in by guess work a large stretch of land such as they thought would balance the world, naming it Terra Australis (the southern land) or Terra Incognita (the unknown land).

As will be seen from the map of the world people of that time had a very hazy idea of what land existed in the southern seas. The map makes it clear that Australia was thought to be part of a vast continent reaching from the Antarctic. The map is astray, too, in its outlines of other world continents, notably South America.

Strangely enough there are maps published before the one reproduced which have upon them a land too much like Australia to be dismissed as mere fancy and invention. These maps were drawn by the French, who may have worked on information obtained from the Portuguese. About this time the Portuguese were sailing the seas north of Australia in search of new countries with which to trade, and it is possible that some Portuguese captain came across Australia and sketched part of the coastline.

At an inquest at Birmingham not long since touching the death of a young lady, Miss Madeline Merton, seventeen years of age, it was shown that the unfortunate girl fell asleep while smoking a cigarette in bed, the coroner remarking that notwithstanding the many fatalities arising from this cause people would persist in running “a very foolish risk.” Yes, smoking in bed is a dangerous habit—and so is smoking out of bed, sometimes! For habitual use of tobacco heavily charged with nicotine may completely undermine the health, and there are, unfortunately, only too many brands like that about! “Safety First” is a wise slogan, and the safe way for smokers is to smoke “toasted,” the five popular brands of which Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead) Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog) Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, after treatment by the manufacturers' exclusive toasting process emerge from it pure as tobacco can possibly be for the “bite” is taken clean out of them, and you can get a smoke absolutely unequalled for flavour and aroma and comparatively innocuous.^*

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