24 BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



necessarily led to the idea of storage, and so opened up a new mental 

 outlook for primitive man. 



But then this new possession of field-crops — the acquisition of 

 cultivated real-estate — created fresh cares and new anxieties, which 

 contained the germ of future political problems. In addition to the 

 previous dangers from nomadic hunters and predatory carnivora, new 

 troubles arose from other enemies — herbivorous animals, birds, insects, 

 droughts and floods. 



The formation of village-groups for protection, and the development 

 later of tribal communities resulted necessarily in the radial extension of 

 field ' claims ' — what our modern politicians, with careless disregard for 

 geometrical terminology, now call ' spheres of influence ' — always dominated 

 by the extending necessities of agriculture, the growing of crops for food 

 and then, with the scarcity of skins, for textile materials. 



The mineralogist and the metallurgist were perhaps before the farmer 

 among those earliest research workers in applied science ; but they were 

 small folk, mere specialists in science. They have obtained a place of 

 undue prominence in the minds of our modern students because of the 

 adoption of their products for purposes of terminology in our conventional 

 time-scale for those ages that preceded history. But this is due merely to 

 the durability of implements as index ' fossils,' and is in no sense a certain 

 indication of their political and industrial importance. 



And then afterwards, long afterwards — indeed, up to historically 

 recent times — national boundaries became extended or were fought for, 

 but still mainly because agricultural products in some form were a 

 necessity for the maintenance of communal life. When British traders 

 first went to India, for instance, they extended their influence first along 

 the navigable rivers for the trade in vegetable products which were raised 

 on the alluvial lands around ; and so British India, as we call it to-day 

 to distinguish the administered areas from the residual native States, is 

 now mainly agricultural. Even when the permanent settlement of Bengal 

 was made in 1793 no one thought of reserving for the State the underlying 

 coal which has since become so surprisingly important. It was the field, 

 and the field only, that was considered to be of commercial and political 

 importance. 



Agricultural products, therefore, until recently dominated the political 

 ambitions of national units. Whether, and to what extent, the possession 

 and use of mineral resources may now modify that dominant spirit is the 

 principal question to which I wish to invite your attention this evening. 



