338 Notes and Comments. 



much that appHes to the two counties investigated also applies 

 to other areas. He considers that the services rendered to man 

 by rats and sparrows, which cannot be epually well performed 

 by other and less destructive animals, are so inconsiderable in 

 proportion to the mischief done that the total extermination 

 of both pests would be attended with excellent economic 

 results. Pigeons and rabbits are unmitigated pests on the 

 farms, but have a food value for which they merit a certain 

 donsideration. 



ROOKS, STARLINGS AND PHEASANTS. 



Rooks, starlings and pheasants resemble one another in 

 that they are all friends of the farmer's up to a certain point, 

 after which they become his enemies. All hinges on the 

 abundance or scarcity locally of their favourite animal 

 food. The starling is an elusive character ; one moment he is 

 a red-handed criminal, in the next he is the saviour of the 

 farmer's pest-ridden crops. Starlings are undesirable in the 

 nesting season, when they rout woodpeckers, wrynecks and 

 other wholly useful birds out of their nesting places. The 

 pheasant in moderation, on the score of his superior food-value, 

 is entitled to a fair share of agricultural produce. The farmer's 

 best friends are birds like the peewit, which are wholly insect- 

 ivorous and will vmder no circumstances take to eating grain. 



THE PROBLEM OF MAN's ANCESTRY.* 



Under this heading Prof. Wood- Jones has published his 

 lecture which received so much notice in the press at the tim.e. 

 We have read it carefully, but are not converted. He considers, 

 with Klaatsch, that " the monkeys and apes are to be best 

 regarded as degenerated branches of the pro-human stock,' 

 and ' it is for those who hold an opposite belief to show us how 

 the bodily primitiveness of some Tarsius-like creature can 

 have progressed into the stage of simian specialization, and 

 then, after long ages, relapsed into an identical primitiveness 

 such as characterizes man.' 



man's ORIGIN. 



He concludes : — Man is no new begot child of the ape, 

 born of a chance variation, bred of a bloody struggle for exist- 

 ence upon pure brutish lines. Such an idea must be dismissed 

 by humanity, and such an idea must cease to exert any influence 

 upon conduct. We did not reach our present level by these 

 means ; certainly we shall never attain a higher one by intensi- 

 fying them. Were man to regard himself as being an extremely 

 ancient type, distinguished now, and differentiated in the past, 

 purely by the qualities of his mind, and were he to regard 

 existing Primates as misguided and degenerated failures of 



* By Prof. Frederick Wood-Jones. London : S. P. C.K. 4S_pp., yd. net. 



