THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 25 



In the evolution of man, as in the evolution of the animals that occupied 

 the world before him, there are no sharply defined, world-wide period 

 limits : the pre-agricultural Bushman still survives and lives the life of 

 pre-agricultural man in this Union of South Africa. The recognition of 

 agriculture as a leading inspiration for acquiring and holding territory has 

 been modified occasionally by ' gold rushes ' into lands previously un- 

 occupied, bxit they have generally had a temporary, often a relatively 

 small, importance. The ' gold fever ' may be what our lighter species of 

 newspaper calls ' dramatic,' but a fever is a short item in the life of a 

 healthy man ; heat-waves do not make climates. Possibly our school 

 children are still told that Australia is noted for its goldfields, but the 

 whole of the gold produced there since its discovery in 1851 is less in value 

 than that of three years' output of Australian agriculture. 



Even here in South Africa, which produces half the world's supply of 

 gold, the value of the metal is still less than that of the pastoral and agri- 

 cultural products. It is true that gold and diamonds introduced temporary 

 diversions in the political expansion of South Africa, but the dominant 

 interests of the Union are still determined by the boer-plaas and the weiveld. 



The adventures of the Spanish conquistadores in the sixteenth century 

 and of their enemies, the sea-roving Norse buccaneers, were inspired by 

 stories of gold in El Dorado. And yet the whole of the South American 

 output of gold, even under its modern development, is almost negligible 

 beside the pastoral and agricultural products — wheat, maize, wool, 

 tobacco, coffee, cocoa, sugar, meat and hides. The total production of 

 gold for the whole continent last year was worth no more than a hundredth 

 part of the surplus of agricultural products which the Argentine alone 

 could spare for export. Truly there is a substantial difference between 

 the bait and the fish, between the sprat and the mackerel. 



The discovery and colonisation of a continent are not the only ways in 

 which the lure of gold has often brought results more valuable than the 

 metal itself. The efforts of philosophers from the time of the Alexandrian 

 Greeks in trying to transmute the base metals into gold resulted in 

 accumulating the raw materials with which Paracelsus laid the foundations 

 of a new chemistry. 



Metals, we know, have been used since early times for simple imple- 

 ments and weapons, but it was not until the industrial revolution in 

 Great Britain that the mechanisation of industries led to any considerable 

 development of our mineral resources, first slowly and with a limited 

 range of products, then on a large scale and with an extended variety. 



