1278 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



other pre-occupation. In any case it is indispensable. To be always 

 thinking of these things in their biological aspects is repulsive to 

 some, only because it is so new. We have not got accustomed to it ; 

 it is unusual. Many of our fellow-citizens look at everything sub 

 specie cBternitatis — under the category of eternity — but that does not 

 prevent them from being very pleasant comrades; and all a biological 

 attitude means is looking at everything suh specie vitce — under the 

 category of life. But evolution is a slow business; and in regard to 

 birth control, time may not be ripe as yet for urgent propagandism. 

 Yet it seems to us that the time is ripe for giving reasoned state- 

 ments, and for giving, to the poorer people especially, opportunities 

 for expert advice when their physicians or they themselves think it 

 is needed. Parents or would-be parents should at least have opportu- 

 nities for the best expert advice. 



Yet after all, when all is said and done, and one goes out into 

 the open air, one feels that if one loses the chivalry and tenderness 

 of lovers, the joyousness of the springtime of the heart, the adven- 

 turousness of early marriage, the delight in having children with 

 whom we are young enough to sympathise and play, we are losing 

 some of the most fragrant flowers in life. 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF BIOLOGY 



The idea of utilising science for the amelioration of life is relatively 

 modern, except as regards medicine. For even the fundamentally 

 important pre-historic domestications and cultivations were prob- 

 ably very different psychologically from the present-day deliberate 

 utilisation of biological science for the control and improvement of 

 man's practical relations with living organisms, both plants and 

 animals. 



Man's circle of practical interests intersects the life-circles of so 

 many other creatures that we cannot here do more than map out 

 the territory. Beginning with animals, we may follow an arrange- 

 ment suggested many years ago by Sir Ray Lankester. First, there 

 are those wild animals that are captured for food, and it is part of 

 the business of economic zoology to make the most of them. Their 

 exploitation, as in the case of fisheries, must not be short-sighted, 

 but must take account of the intricacies of the web of life. Here one 

 thinks of deer and antelopes, rabbits and hares, pigeons and par- 

 tridges, frogs and food-fishes, squids and snails, cockles and mussels, 

 oysters and clams, crabs and lobsters, shrimps and prawns, palolo- 

 worms and sea-cucumbers. Every year, except in cases where man 

 is shortsighted and greedy, there is some improvement in the exploi- 

 tation of animals used as food, not only in trying to secure a steady 

 supply, but in making the most of what is captured. Thus there are 



