II 



SOME EDUCATIONAL AND MORAL ASPECTS 

 OF ZOOLOGY 



As I have found it impossible, during the past three years, to 

 take up any magazine or any newly published book that does 

 not deal directly or indirectly with the war, so I have found 

 it impossible, even when dealing with so abstract and peaceful 

 a subject as zoology, to avoid looking at it in its relation to 

 the events going on around us. 



Nor do I think that I need apologise for doing so. At a 

 time when deeply rooted institutions, systems of politics, 

 beliefs which form the basis of modern civilisation, are put 

 on their trial and required to justify their existence, it is a 

 proper thing to try to give some account of the tendencies 

 of a branch of learning to which I, in common with a number 

 of people, have devoted the whole or a larger part of my 

 life's work. I propose, therefore, to consider in outline what 

 the science of zoology has done for the good of mankind : — 

 what influence its teaching had before the war : what part, if 

 any, it has filled during the war : what usefulness — I use the 

 word deliberately— it is likely to have after the war. 



In war itself zoology has not taken a conspicuous part. 

 Its value, as assessed by politicians, may be gauged by the 

 treatment proposed to be meted out to the Natural History 

 Museiim at South Kensington, and by the subUme ignorance 

 of the value and interest of zoological collections shown by a 

 Government Department. And I observe that zoological 

 teachers and professors, when past mib'tary age, are mostly 

 pursuing their normal course of work undisturbed. Their 



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