1922.] Indian Science Congress. I.8.C. 87 
trees.” This mystic aroma is compared by the early English 
poet to the hope of Divine salvation. 
slumbers. 
Virgil in his Georgics wrote what was accepted for centu- 
ries by the learned as a manual of practical agriculture poet- 
ically expressed. Among other processes he described the 
manufacture of a swarm of bees from the carcase of a heifer. 
Imagine the poet reclining in his cool verandah with a manu- 
script of Thescritus half unrolled on his lap. and pausing in his 
s a 
. . 
dictation to gaze over the countryside and muse 
or 
nately for his reputation as a practical agriculturist his (or 
father Theocritus’s) process for the abiogenetic production of 
honey-bees, which involved the slaughter of a prime heifer, 
was as unsound economically as it was biologicaliy impossible 
No one tried the experiment, and so-the process was accepted 
from generation to generation as practical. In actual fact the 
light-hearted, and doubtless illiterate, Samson, who slew a lion 
on his way to visit his lady-love and afterwards found a comb 
of wild honey in the skeleton, and made a riddle of it to puzzle 
the Philistines, was much the more practical man of the two. 
In modern times the man who introduced mongooses into the 
West Indies, rabbits into Australia or sparrows into North 
America doubtless thought that he had accomplished a great 
work of applied biology—at first. : 
In discussions on the value of zoological works there 1s 
nothing that makes me more indignant than the saying that 
this or that piece of Indian research is good work—for India. 
and many others—have no reason to claim indulgence. _ eh 
can be nothing more fatal to Indian science than to aim at a 
low ideal, and no greater insult can be : hi- 
scientific effort than to judge it from a racial or a geograp 
calstand-point. Zoology is often regarded in : 
rella of the sciences, and it is, therefore, necessary On oe re 
for zoologists to mingle the meekness of the dove with the 
subtlety of the serpent. Some years ago, 10 
about a certain unity of purpose in the adm 
Indian Museum I incurred the accusation of | 
from one of my colleagues. I replied that | 
my 
inistration of the 
latent kaiserism 
t seemed to me 
