2 2 PKOCEEDINGS Ol' THE 



eat his bread in the sweat of his face has not been abrogated. 

 Kecurrins; mediaeval sumptuary enactments indicate that the 

 Essene injunction' was not always observed, and the State has 

 again intervened to strengthen faith. We are under dictation, 

 not only as to what, but as to when and as to how much we may 

 eat. Vicarious thought is being taken as to what we shall wear. 



Necessity, foster-mother of discovery and invention, has made 

 man at all periods a practical student of natural history. His 

 achievements in this field are written in archaeological, ethnological 

 and economic chnmicles. Even had time allowed, we may there- 

 fore omit a survey of his triumphs, and be content with random 

 allusions to some of his more enduring successes. 



In our latitudes man learned to appreciate the merits of the 

 native oyster and to relish an apple too austere, perhaps, for our 

 more fastidious palates. Modern feasts begin and end with these 

 prehistoric dishes. If under other skies he were content to clothe 

 liimself with leaves or hammered bark, in our keener air he chose 

 a cloak of rough-dressed j)elt. Though garments of the former 

 type have not found favour among us, a widespread reversion to 

 raiment of the latter kind is an outstanding modern fashion. 

 From the first man indented on every realm of nature for his 

 shield and spear, his sliot and sling, his shaft and bow. A like 

 catliolicity marks the requirements of our newest military arm. 



Widened accjuaintance with the facts of natui'al history enabled 

 man to keep cattle and to tame the earth itself. In these pursuits 

 he learned to select and to breed. That his results were empirical 

 only makes them more impressive. If we, by taking instructed 

 thought, may now in a lifetime surpass the achievements of ages, 

 this is because the study of the natural history of nutrition and 

 inlieritance has revealed truths undreamt of in earlier philosophy. 



Similar advances in knowledge taught man to spin thread and 

 weave webs from the hair of the beasts in his flocks and the bast 

 of the plants in his fields. He was thereby enahled ' to array him 

 in vestures ' more seemly than his older coats of bark and skin. 

 He did more, however, than this ; he thus unwittingly laid the 

 foundations of that organized industrial system whose social 

 consequences disquiet us to-day. 



These results did not exhaust man's interest in natural history. 

 His flocks and his crops were open to attack by beast and fowl 

 and fly. The watch and ward their safety called for had to be 

 sleepless. But his care was only effective where the habits and 

 life-histories of his enemies were understood. Dwellers in fenced 

 and settled lands forget how much this involved. The boy in 

 blue with his horn lives only in a nursery-rhyme ; the lad in grey 

 with his rattle is all but a memory ; the scarecrow is a surviving 

 relic of an elaborate defensive system. The old anxiety is still 

 understood in regions where the great carnivora threaten the fold ; 

 where hog and bear endanger the harvest ; where the eagle may 

 levy toll on the flock ; where the locust, in an liour, may convert 

 a smiling landscape into a leafless waste. 



