TROPICAL EDUCATION. 35 



that crowd his drawing-room. I knew a lady who made 

 a capital collection of butterflies and moths at her own 

 dinner-table by simply impounding in paper boxes 

 the insects that flitted about the lamp at dessert. 

 Why, if it comes to that, the very bread itself comprises 

 generally a whole entomological cabinet, and contains in 

 fragments the disjecta membra of specimens enough to 

 stock entire glass cases at severe South Kensington. 

 How's that for an inducement to study life where it is 

 richest and most abundant in its native starting-place ? 



But above all in educational importance I rank the 

 advantage of seeing human nature in its primitive sur- 

 roundings, far from the squalid and chilly influences of 

 the tail-end of the Glacial epoch. I admit at once that 

 cold has done much, exceeding much, for human develop- 

 ment has been the mother of civilisation in somewhat 

 the same sense that necessity has been the mother of 

 invention. To it, no doubt, we owe to a great extent, in 

 varying stages, clothing, the house, fire, the steam-engine. 

 Yet none the less is it true that the first levels of society 

 must needs have been passed under essentially tropical 

 conditions, and that nascent civilisation spread but slowly 

 northward, from Egypt and Asia, through Greece and 

 Italy, to the cloudy regions where its chief centres are 

 at present domiciled under canopies of coal smoke. And 

 even to-day the sight of the tropics, green and luxuriant, 

 brings us into touch at once with earlier ideas and habits 

 of the race makes us more able not only to understand, 

 but also to sympathise with, our ancient ancestors of the 

 naked-and-not-ashamed era of culture. Views formed 

 exclusively in the North tend too much to imitate the 



D 2 



