194 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



waning nomadic instincts. It also comes about 

 in the ordinary course of social discipline, which 

 soon makes us feel that it does not do to be always 

 running away. Dr. Davenport makes the interest- 

 ing point that the choice of an occupation often 

 illustrates, an attempt to satisfy a roving impulse. 

 Thus the antithesis between tinker and tailor is 

 familiar, and the railway guard and the itinerant 

 preacher may be " rovers " in disguise. If the 

 assumption be correct that primitive man was 

 nomadic in the ordinary sense of the word, a prob- 

 ability is established in favor of Dr. Davenport's 

 view that a wandering tendency is still widespread 

 among men as a surviving ancient trait which now 

 and again asserts itself. If the assumption be 

 correct, gipsies, and others like them, may be in- 

 terpreted as still retaining in considerable numbers 

 the old-fashioned roaming habit, but care must be 

 taken to discriminate if possible between tribes or 

 groups who wander because they will and those who 

 wander because they must. Some may have be- 

 come hunters and fishers because of a nomadic 

 bent, but others because the environmental condi- 

 tions did not admit of agriculture or stable home- 

 steads. The way in which the East Coast herring 

 fishermen follow for more than half the year the 

 appearance of the fish the undecided question as 

 to mass-movements of herring need not be raised 

 around our shores is a modern instance of roaming 

 with an economic rather than a temperamental 

 basis. 



