The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-14
THE D|GN|TAR|ES
 GOT A SHOCK. Dr. Davidson Favors the LIoyd-
 George Budget A QUAINT OLD CUSTOM It Is Recalled That Mine Explosion at Trmsarent CoIlery Was Fore told by Old C'alrvoyant Two
 Years Ago.
IA QUAINT OLD CUSTOM
BY PAUL EVERETT.

London, November 12-(SpeciaD-The high ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Church of England, who are, naturally, conservatively or reactionarily inclined. have received a great shock. Dr. Ran dan Davidson, Archbishop of Canter- bury and the Primas of the Church. has made it known that he Is heartily in i favor of Lloyd Georges budget, which several bishops have denounced as rev. olutionary and which has been waringly praised, as a promising sign of the times, l by the socialist press of Germany. 1 To those who know the Archbishop l intimately, the announcement of his sympathy with measure. which is the 1 first step made in England towards re- ] lieving the masses of the unjust burdens i of taxation and force the Idle rich to part with a very small percentage of their unearned wealth for the benefit of the state that protects caused little surprise.
 ] He knows the pitiful conditions of life 1 of the poor. and his warm heart always i went out out of sympathy with them, 1 but his conversion to a belief in mod crate socialistic theories Is due to the late Henry George of New York. Many years ago the Archbishop met the great American philosopher and became deeply interested in the great problem of the land, and the scheme of taxation out lined by the author of Progress and Poverty" He not only read the book himself, but induced the late Queen Vic toria to read 1t.
 A quaint custom was observed at the Law Courts the other day, when the City Secondary, on behalf of the sher- if of the City of London, attended be- fore the Kings Remembrancer to Pay the quit rents' of two faggots and horseshoes and nails.
 The custom dates back to the time when one. Walker le Brun, a farrter, held plot of land in the Parish of St. Clement Danes, the condition of his tenure being that he should annually present the king with six horseshoes and sixty-one nails. For many decades the Kings Remembrancer has represent ed the reigning monarch, and he did so again this year
 The Strand forge was demolished in the reign of Richard IL, and all traces of certain lands, known as the Moors in Shropshire-upon which two faggots severed by a sharp hatcbet, and after wards by blunt instrument, had to be presented-have also disappeared As time went on the rendering of the trib- ute devolved upon the sheriff of the city of London; hence 1t was that the City Secondary attended before the Kings Re- membrancer, and duly presented half dozen horseshoes and sixty-one nails, as prescribed. The horseshoes were the identical ones that had been presented for upwards of 500 years.
 The City Secondary. in accordance with ! custom, chopped two small fagots. first
 
 blunt hatchet, and the instruments were presented to the Lady Mayoress. Three deaths have followed the recent explosion at the Trimsarent Coliery and the accident has again brought up & prophecy made two years ago by Llanelly clairvoyant, who visited Trim sarent.
 The woman at the time foretold the explosion. saying that 1t would happen in two years. She Is said to have told one man that he would be in the flames, and, curious to relate, this particular man was in the middle of the blast and Is among the dead.
 So terrified were the colliers at the time that they refused to go down in the pit, and as a consequence the col- fiery was idle. Proceedings were taken by the police against the clairvoyant for
 
 and a heavy fine was imposed. An ingenious machine has been in- vented at the London hospital for prov ing that tnhalations of oxygen directly increase ones muscular power.
 The apparatus was devised by Profes- sor Leonard Hill, whose experiment, in which a man held his breath for nine minutes after previously brea thing in oxygen was recently described in his journal.
 A 6o-pound weight is attached to rope running over a, pulley at the top of an upright beam some eight feet high. The experimenter. by pulling downwards on the free end of the rope, can lift the weight vertically upwards for distance of 19 inches. On letting go the rope. the weight falls on to a projecting shelf, where it rests until the experimenter pulls 1t up again. The experiment consists in seeing how many times man can lift the weight during one breath.
 One of the assistants, while breathing in his ordinary manner, suddenly held his breath when his lungs were ordinar- 1 ly full of air and began raising the weight. He was able to raise 1t and low CT 1t seventeen times during the twenty l three seconds he succeeded in holding | his breath.
 !, He then spent three minutes in taking full deep breaths of ordinary fresh air. It was then found that he could raise the ] weight thirty times in fifty seconds be- 1 fore he had to breathe again. Then, after a short rest, he breathed | deeply pure oxygen out of a bag for three minutes, after which he raised the i weight seventy times during the eighty