SOUND BEACH AND THE A A 
89 
FRONT VIEW OF ARCADIA— SOUND BEACH’S “SHOW PLACE” AND COMMUNITY CENTER. 
Photograph October, 1920. 
finest community of homes, the best 
public spirit, the kindest of good will 
to all in that grand old town, Green- 
wich, the town de luxe of the world. 
Cordially yours, 
Edward F. Bigelow, 
ArcAdiA : Sound Beach, Connecticut. 
“Would a Naturalist Starve?” 
There is a shock, a comedy, a 
tragedy, a philosophy, a sermon, a lib- 
eral education in that question which 
comes to us from a woman editor of a 
magazine requesting an article on that 
subject. 
“Would a naturalist starve?” How 
strange that inquiry sounds to a nat- 
uralist ! What volumes of perverted 
ideas it contains, into what limited 
sphere is the naturalist placed by that 
question. “Would a naturalist starve?” 
Ye gods, what a question! The whole 
world would have starved, there would 
have been no people in this world with 
modern cviilization if it had not been 
for the naturalists. It is the naturalist 
that supports everybody else. It is the 
labors of the naturalist primarily, sup- 
plemented by his classified knowledge 
that gives him the name in addition 
to that of scientist, that have produced 
every good thing on earth that makes 
life worth living. It was a naturalist 
who early studied animals and plants 
and demonstrated them and he has 
been doing it and improving it ever 
since. It is the naturalist that studied 
the soil and found out how to treat it 
and adapt fertilizers to it and bring 
those fertilizers sometimes from the 
most distant parts of the earth. It was 
the naturalist who studied the woods 
and how they are adapted to a variety 
of purposes. It was the naturalist who 
found the coal and oil in the depths of 
the earth. It was the naturalist who 
found the minerals and metals and 
then to those other studies of a nat- 
uralist applied their principles and 
thought out the myriads of their uses. 
It was by the naturalist, and largely 
in every case from the love of it at first 
rather than any possibility of utility, 
that thousands of things have been 
studied and been brought to the use of 
humanity. Without the labors of the 
naturalist at present and in past hu- 
manity could not have lived for a day. 
Good health is due to the naturalist 
who has studied how best to care for 
the human body. Hospitals are due to 
the naturalists who have studied how 
parts of the human body may be re- 
moved and made over and the broken 
parts put together. To the studies of 
the naturalist we owe every automo- 
bile that goes by or every flying ma- 
chine that whirls overhead. Every food 
storage building contains the products 
of the thoughts and labors of nat- 
uralists. 
