The modifications of the external aspects of organic nature produced by man's interference / by George Rolleston.

  • Rolleston, George, 1829-1881.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The modifications of the external aspects of organic nature produced by man's interference / by George Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Avliicli are eaten by others, would resume an importance even in the landscape which tlieir extirpation within our four seas has rendered an impossibility for all future time short of the time when tlie Channel will once again become dry land. In concluding a Lecture the title of which might serve for the ofteu-to-be-repeated title of many successive and closely printed volumes, let me take as a text the following words from Victor Hehn’s book, ‘ Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere,’ 3rd edition, 1877; Berlin; p. 435), to which I owe more even than I have expressed : “ \Vas die Moderne Welt von der alten unterscheidet ist Naturwissenschaft, Technik und Naturalokomiewhat makes the modern world to differ from the old is natural science, command of apparatus, and political economy. As regards this last differential peculiarity, I have to remark that Herr Victor Hehn’s last edition bears the date of 1877, and that, consequently, he cannot have had colonial tariffs either of Melbourne or of Canada before his eyes; nor, though living in Berlin, could he have heard the words uttered there only ten days ago, though they were in an authoritative voice (see ‘Times,’ May 2nd); nor, finally, could he have been present at a meeting attended in Paris by the representatives of no less than fifty-eight Chambers of Commerce on the very day before, the first, that is, not of April, but of ]\Iay in this very year of grace 1879. Otherwise I cannot but think that Herr Hehn would not have said the political economy of the present, either as put out in words, or as carried out in practice, was so very different from that of ancient times. To any one at all thick of sight or hard of hearing the proportions of any such difference are wholly inappreciable. I turned to what was one of the favourite studies of my youth, my Aristophanes, and I find Dicaeopolis, to adapting whose name Prince Bismarck would, I apprehend, as little object as it would seem he does to his adopting his principles, sighing (in the Acharnians, 1. 33-36) for the time when he would get back to his farm * the articles consumed in which at least were “ reserved for native industry.” * Aristoph. Acham. 33-36. rhv 5’ fixhv S^fiov iroeZv hs ovScttwitot’ iiirev dySpaxas irpioi, aW’ avTOi ftpepe iravra xcb Trpiwv airriV. Cato and Varro appear, according to the passages given in Hehn, p. 425, to have been similarly in tlie dark, the first of these averring, 2, 5, in words very nearly reproducing that of Dicseopolis, “ Patrem familias vendaccm non einaconi esse oportet,” whilst the latter, 1, 22, 1, in words which the Chambers of Commerce aforesaid re-eclioed in their modified Roman tongue, “ Quae nasci in fundo ac fieri a domcsticis poteruut, corum ne quid ematur.”