26 ANIMAL LIFE AND HUMAN PEOaRESS 



services, though freely offered, are not considered specially 

 useful in war. 



In this zoology differs much from the non-biological 

 sciences ; from chemistry and physics in particular. They 

 have been harnessed to the chariot of Mars, and have been 

 responsible for much of the horror and destructiveness of 

 modern warfare. High explosives, poison gas, flame-pro j ectors, 

 aeroplanes and Zeppelins, submarines, are all of them contribu- 

 tions of chemical and physical science to warfare. 



But, so far as I know, zoology stands acquitted of all 

 responsibility in this respect ; it has not supplied any engine 

 for the destruction of human life. 



On the contrary, it may justly lay claim to have un- 

 obtrusively done much to mitigate suffering and to diminish 

 loss of life. For it is primarily because, in past years, zoologists 

 have not thought it beneath their dignity to devote their 

 lives to the study of the most insignificant forms of animals, 

 that the loss of life through sickness and disease has been so 

 immeasurably less in this than in any previous war. The 

 credit goes to pathology and preventive medicine, and they 

 richly deserve it, but none the less they could not have 

 done all that they have if it had not been for the labours of 

 zoologists. 



For the rest the aid of zoology has been invoked, but very 

 slightly in comparison with the sister science of botany, in 

 the production of food ; in giving advice on the breeding of 

 domestic animals ; in teaching how to recognise and destroy 

 insect and other animal pests ; and, in a very small way, in 

 advice on the subject of fisheries. 



It is something to be able to claim for the science that 

 one professes that, in a time of savagery, its influence has been 

 altogether benign. But I am not clear that zoology can be 

 acquitted of a malign influence in the years preceding the 

 outbreak of the war. 



In this country, where" the Government, and the great 

 British public itself, are magnificently impervious to academi- 

 cal teaching, and where, before the war, any public state- 

 ment on the part of a body of professors was a signal for an 



