358 CIVIC BIOLOGY 



to lead the way, the scientific organization of the nation and 

 of the world says, virtually, to every young man and woman: 

 " Show your mettle, demonstrate your ability to discover some- 

 thing worth while, and equipment and material support will 

 be supplied, and every avenue of opportunity will be opened to 

 you. Show power to think and to discover, and scholarships 

 and fellowships are ready to place university apparatus and 

 laboratories at your disposal" 



Historical. How have discoveries been made in the past ? 

 How have we learned to make two blades of grass grow 

 where one grew before ? How may we make ten blades 

 grow where one grows now ? What does it matter that we 

 know the value of fresh air, of pure water, of good food ; 

 that we know that the blood circulates ; that we have brains 

 and nerves and muscles which require exercise and care ; 

 and that we know about bacteria and parasites and the dis- 

 eases they cause ? Do not these things, and all the rest for 

 which the science of biology stands, mean the difference 

 between a world of jungles and barren deserts, scourged by 

 famines and pestilences, and a world of farms and gardens, 

 full of happy, healthy people? 



Men have lived in the world for at least five hundred 

 thousand years, and astronomers tell us that the earth will 

 be habitable for about five million years to come. Is it not 

 remarkable how little we know, how little all the millions and 

 billions of men and women who have lived have been able to 

 discover, the handful of pebbles on the shore of the ocean 

 of truth still to be discovered ? How incredibly slow progress 

 in discovery must have been at first. How much do animals 

 really " see " (in the sense in which Emerson uses the word) 

 of the flowers and trees, birds, insects, and fungi in the fields 

 they roam? And how little the best of us really see of all 

 the things that happen in our fields, roadsides, and gardens. 

 Without doubt thousands of choice varieties of flowers, 



