842 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORQANIC NATURE 



before it begaa to be modified by man's interference ; the liegnum 

 Ilominis would not be succeeded by the Regnum Canum familiariumy 

 but by that of Canum lujporum ; and generally the X's^x^^x ferae naturae^ 

 both those which eat others and those which are eaten by others, 

 would resume an importance even in the landscape which their 

 extirpation within our four seas has rendered an impossibility for 

 all future time short of the time when the Channel will once again 

 become dry land. 



In concluding a Lecture the title of which might serve for the 

 often-to-be-repeated title of many successive and closely printed 

 volumes, let me take as a text the following words from Victor 

 Hehn's book (' Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere,' 3rd edition, 1877 ; 

 Berlin ; p. 435), to which I owe more even than I have expressed : 

 'Was die moderne Welt von der alten unterscheidet ist Natur- 

 wissenschaft, Technik und Naturalokonomie ' — what makes the 

 modern world to differ from the old is natural science, command of 

 apparatus, and political economy. As regards this last differential 

 peculiarity, I have to remark that Herr Victor Hehn's last edition 

 bears the date of 1877, and that, consequently, he cannot have had 

 colonial tariffs either of Melbourne or of Canada before his eyes ; 

 nor, though living in Berlin, could he have heard the words uttered 

 there only ten days ago, though they were in an authoritative voice 

 (see ' Times,' May ijnd) ; nor, finally, could he have been present 

 at a meeting attended in Paris by the representatives of no less 

 than fifty- eight Chambers of Commerce on the very day before, 

 the first, that is, not of April, but of May in this very year of 

 grace 1879. Otherwise I cannot but think that Herr Hehn would 

 not have said the political economy of the present, either as put out 

 in words, or as carried out in practice, was so very different from 

 that of ancient times. To any one at all thick of sight or hard of 

 hearing the proportions of any such difference are wholly inappre- 

 ciable. I turned to what was one of the favourite studies of my 

 youth, my Aristophanes, and I find Dicaeopolis^, to adapting whose 



* Acharn. 33-36 : — 



rov V kfibv dijfjiov irodaiv, 



bs ovSeircuTTOT' etnev, avOpaicas irpio), 



dW' avTos ecfxpi navra x^ vpioov dnijv. 



Cato and Varro appear, according to the passage given in Hehn, p. 425, to have been 



similarly in the dark, the first of these averring, 2. 5, in words very nearly reproducing 



that of Dicaeopolis, * Patrem familias vendacem non emacem esse oportet,' whilst the 



