26 PEOOEEUINGS OF THE 



this doi^s not lessen the debt of humanity to Markhani, or dim 

 the Iionour in wliich history will always hold liis name. 



An instance of acclimatization within our own memories may 

 in time tell a similar tale. A Brazilian vegetable-product, which 

 owes its English name to the accident that it may be used to 

 erase pencil-marks, proved so etlective a material in the making of 

 raincoats that these garments have furnished their designer with 

 a ' short-cut to immortality.' In tlie course of this adaptation 

 to one of nmn's primitive needs this substance developed possi- 

 bilities and induced demands which made it worth while to treat 

 the tree that yields it as Cinchona was treated. Within a 

 generation the financial interests involved, in our Eastern depend- 

 encies alone, are said to have reached ' nine figures.' The details 

 of this history are clear. Many of those who helped to make it 

 are still alive. This, however, has not prevented international 

 finance, for objects of her own, from turning to account an 

 incautious scientific surmise and trying ro invest the tale of the 

 introduction of Rubber with some of the qualities of a myth. 



Intercourse with races still partly dependent on the forest for 

 what they eat and wear enables us to appreciate how much 

 knowledge of wild nature man may acquire in a lite-time, and to 

 realize that this knowledge is not always limited to animals and 

 ])lants that are useful or hurtful. The opportunity of studying 

 those races while engaged in the assimilation of European culture 

 teaches us how rapidly such knowledge may disappear. A new 

 generation sees life from another standpoint. The young acquire 

 information and imbibe beliefs unfamiliar to their elders. The 

 repugnance they are urged to entertain towards the faith of their 

 fathers induces a correlated contempt for what their fathers 

 knew. The didactic instruction of the schoolroom replaces the 

 liberal education which intimacy with nature imparts. The 

 faculty of observation is left unexercised and sufi^ers from the 

 atrophy which attends disuse. 



There is nothing new in this, nor is the tendency confined to 

 ' selvage men.' The phenomenon was noted by a father of our 

 science among a people so polished as the ancient Greeks. 

 Writing of plant-lore generally this author has remarked that 

 " most of the wild kinds have no names and few know about 

 them, while most of the cultivated kinds have received names 

 and they are more coiumonly observ^ed.'' We, too, sometimes 

 find that advances in knowledge, \\hether literary or scientific, 

 may be accompanied by a loss of Intercast in wild nature. 



i3ut even as regards ' cultivated kinds,' and even among those 

 who have escaped the inhibiting infiuences of library or laboratory, 

 there is a uiarked contrast between the effects of Greek culture 

 and those of the ' organized efficiency ' which Europe accepts as 

 a substitute for civilization. Concerning these ' cultivated 

 kinds ' our Greek author could say : " for as many people make 

 use of them they are also led to study the differejices." Among 



