26 With Rod and Gun in New England 



that every effort should be made to promote and stimulate a taste for out- 

 door life, to encourage a love for athletic sports and endeavor to lead our 

 overworked business men, both young and old, to take an interest in such 

 employment as the rod and gun will furnish. Anything that will lead 

 them out into the woods and fields is to be commended, for I believe it 

 will be upon this that the future longevity, the vitality of the race will 

 depend."* 



" Man is a curious animal after all, Doctor," said I. " He somehow 

 or other seems to do the wrong thing almost always, and some of the mis- 

 takes he has made have caused immeasurable disasters." 



" Yes," he replied, " and it seems incredible that some of the blunders 

 should have been made. For example : — A few years ago a small number 

 of rabbits were taken from England and turned loose in Australia. Some 

 one thought, probably, that they would prove a valuable addition to the 

 fauna of that country, but he evidently forgot the natural conditions of the 

 animals' lives when he thus acclimatized them. Those conditions were, a 

 cold climate during a good portion of the year, and the existence of many 

 predaceous animals, such as foxes, weasels, stoats and rapacious birds. 



* Since the above was written the following excerpt has appeared in 

 type from a lecture by Dr. R. N. Kellogg, before the Interstate Civic and 

 Philanthropic Conference : 



"Our physical strength is decreasing. Luxury is on the increase; 

 muscular development on the decrease. We eat too much. We shun 

 physical exertion that would be beneficial. There is too much social 

 excitement and too much education. Children are being overeducated, at 

 the expense of the physical being. There is too much reading for the 

 good of the nerves and the general health. Civilization promotes brain 

 life at the expense of the body. Modern business, political, religious and 

 social life is like modern education, strained, forced and harmful. Our 

 business men rush and push and hurry, and drop off at forty or forty-five— 

 just the time they should be at their best. A horse can walk all day, 

 but he cannot gallop an hour. It is the rapid pace that kills." Comment- 

 ing on this the Boston Herald says : " Everybody seems touched by the 

 universal madness of the hour. Apparently the race is only working out 

 some mysterious law of Nature ; like any growth, it must fructify, wither 

 and die. All this marvellous progression of the last five and twenty years 

 is exhausting to the finite being. Mind and matter cannot endure constant 

 friction without decay. One has n't to look far for examples, but it is not 

 possible to halt. Education, overeducation, in fact, and luxury, the culti- 

 vation of tastes that beget restheticism, sports and supreme exhibitions of 

 physical endurance are one and all so many whips, lashing mankind into 

 this pace that kills. It is very curious, this modern development of the 

 race. It beggars that of old Egypt, of ancient Greece and Rome, and, in 

 proportion, its effect will be more ruinous, the final catastrophe more over- 

 whelming, because it is not one people, but the entire world that is in- 

 volved." 



