Author: Arthur Dendy

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2015-07-06

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781514864777

This volume is the outcome of a series of public lectures organized by Prof. Dendy at King's College, London, in 1917-18 under the auspices of the Imperial Studies Committee of the University of London. The object of the course was to inform the public regarding zoological results already applied in furtherance of human progress, and to emphasize the claims of zoological science to recognition on terms of equality with other departments of learning. The college and the editor are to be congratulated, not only on their courage and public spirit in having, during the dark days of the war, arranged a course which makes so much for enlightenment and for reconstruction, but also on having made the subject-matter accessible to all through the medium of this volume. The lectures are most informing, and if we express regret at the absence of consistently full citation of the authors quoted, this is done in tribute to their permanent value. Prof. Dendy contributes the preface and an opening lecture on "Man's Account with the Lower Animals." To the weighty material items in that account he adds the pregnant idea that much of our aesthetic sense is founded on insect aesthesis, since the marvelous forms, colors, and fragrances of flowers arose "in the course of evolution in response to what we may fairly call the tastes of insects long before man appeared on the scene." Prof. Bourne adds a thoughtful essay on "Some Educational and Moral Aspects of Zoology." Prof. A. Thomson writes with his usual vivid grace and wealth of illustration on "Man and the Web of Life." Mr. Tate Regan discusses "Museums and Research," incidentally putting in a strong plea for the view that evolution has been mainly adaptive, and that a change of structure has followed, not preceded, a change of habits. "The Origin of Man" is dealt with by Prof. Wood Jones, who concentrates on primitive anatomical features exhibited by man, differences between man and other Primates, certain striking resemblances to Tarsius, and the probable remoteness of origin of the human stock. With perhaps a little special pleading one could use a good many of his data in a thesis having for its subject "Non-Arboreal Man." "Some Inhabitants of Man and their Migrations" is the subject of Dr. Leiper's lecture, which will be read with all the more interest in view of his own recent researches on Bilharzia. In "Our Food from the Sea" Prof. Herdman emphasizes the vital importance of sea fisheries, while "Tsetse Flies and Colonisation ' receives exposition from Prof. Newstead. "I saw before me a great place where men and women were making and imparting knowledge." Thus begins Prof. Punnett's "dream " at the end of his most readable lecture on "The Future of the Science of Breeding". May the dream come true for every branch of zoological science. Meantime we find emphasized, over and over again, in the work before us a sad disproportion between the public support given to the study of animal life and the splendid results this study has achieved and can yet achieve for the furtherance of human progress. -Nature, Volume 104 [1920]