An Amusing Natural History
ENLIVENED with Such tit-bits of information as that the .mongoose will -nibble off the ears of babies left sleeping" by their motheis in the fields, and that in Greenland, whaleskin takes the place of chewing-gum, Animals of Land and Sea, will be found a thoroughly readable book.
. The author treats the whole animal kingdom as a single living unit, in its vital and ever-changing relations to man. Animals firnish us with leather, silk, medicine and wool. Yet how many hundreds of years had elapsed before we produced, through breeding and selection, the finest wool-bearing sheep in-the world—the Australian Merino ?
Mr. Clark's thesis is that research must always be the found- ation of biological knowledge. Through- research we have conquered.typhus and made possible the Panama Canal ; yet in the production of our own food, biology plays but a small part.
As Mr. Clark says, our armies and navies are furnished with the latest scientific weapons of defence ; while our farmers, who grow the crops by which we live, spend their lives fighting insect perils with comparatively-small assistance from Science. Chemistry and mathematics, continues the author, have made the modem armies and navies what they are. These sciences, combined with a knowledge of the life and habits of his enemy pests; will do the same for the farmer.
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