194 SECRETS OF ‘ANIMAL LIFE 
waning nomadic instincts. It also comes about 
in the ordinary course of social discipline, which 
soon makes us feel that it does not do to be always 
running away. Dr. Davenport makes the interest- 
ing point that the choice of an occupation often 
illustrates an attempt to satisfy a roving impulse. 
Thus the antithesis between tinker and tailor is 
familiar, and the railway guard and the itinerant 
preacher may be “rovers” in disguise. If the 
assumption be correct that primitive man was 
nomadic in the ordinary sense of the word, a prob- 
ability is established in favor of Dr. Davenport’s 
view that a wandering tendency is still widespread 
among men as a surviving ancient trait which now 
and again asserts itself. If the assumption be 
correct, gipsies, and others like them, may be in- 
terpreted as still retaining in considerable numbers 
the old-fashioned roaming habit, but care must be 
taken to discriminate if possible between tribes or 
groups who wander because they will and those who 
wander because they must. Some may have be- 
come hunters and fishers because of a nomadic 
bent, but others because the environmental condi- 
tions did not admit of agriculture or stable home- 
steads. The way in which the East Coast herring 
fishermen follow for more than half the year the 
appearance of the fish—the undecided question as 
to mass-movements of herring need not be raised— 
around our shores is a modern instance of roaming 
with an economic rather than a temperamental 
basis. 
