226 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



herb-gathering and gardening, and has not 

 botany as a science got an uplift from all its 

 many contacts with human needs? We think 

 of yeast and fermentations, of bacteria and dis- 

 eases, of diatoms and fish-supply, of breeding 

 experiments and the improvement of our food- 

 plants, of plant-associations and inter-relations 

 in their bearing on the perennial problem of 

 making the most of the Earth for our children as 

 well as for ourselves. 



The lore of the hunter, the fisher, the shepherd 

 is older than all zoology, and every thoughtful 

 naturalist will agree that his science runs a risk 

 of losing vitality and real progressiveness if it 

 gets too far away from the actual life of animals 

 as it is lived in Nature. Nay more, that just as a 

 stimulus has been periodically given to zoological 

 studies by the return of a great expedition, such 

 as the Challenger, with its enthralling splendour of 

 animate spoils, so the tackling of some practical 

 problem of real moment has often been followed 

 by some impulse to pure science. 



It is perhaps going too far to say with Prof. 

 Espinas: "Practice has always gone in advance 

 of theory"; but there is no doubt that science 

 and practice act and react most beneficially upon 

 one another. Science has grown out of practical 

 lore, and it has nothing to gain, but much to lose, 

 by forgetting its origins. 



