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from the larger towns, and in this way acts favourably to the biological future of the island communities.

The question as to what determines or inhibits the 'progressive development of an isolated animal or human group, provided as it is with an actual or potentially higher metabolic rate than that of its more dominated portion, is a question of the greatest interest. In so far as isolation leads to greater individuation,' we may look to the isolated as the source of fresh individuality and power to wield dominance, to be paid for in time, however, with the inevitable price of diminished progress. A careful survey of closely allied species in certain groups of animals (Fishes, Echinoderms) has shown that the nearest allies of a given species occupy widely separated areas. Thus, the common European Starfish has its nearest ally on the opposite coast of Canada and America, and the seaurchin, Echinus esculentus, has its nearest ally in blood far removed in space. Canada and Scotland might serve as a typical example. Just as conditions of existence form one of the factors governing isolation, so the readiness to make a change of function in 'adaptation' to a consensus of favourable conditions may determine the advance. The heightened metabolic activity of the isolated ones may then profit by the new environment which they incorporate into their new individuality.

Professor Elliot Smith has emphasised this view of the origin of civilisation. If, as we all hoped, he had addressed you, I venture to think that in his mind, if not expressed in his words, would have been that thought the readiness is all.' Many tides in the affairs of men may have washed the islands of the strong isolated groups before their concurrent benefit was grasped and developed. Egypt and Western Asia was not the only area where the earth would have seen the birth of civilisation, but elsewhere, perhaps, the readiness was lacking even if the physiological impetus was stored in the 'biological history of the people. So it may have been with the history of animals and so it may be in the future. 'In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men.' Yet chance has other gifts than harsh reproof.

Zoology as a Factor in Civilisation.

When we consider the principles of periodicity of regulation in form and function, and of that characterisation of successive generations which constitutes genetics, we cannot help concluding that, so far as they are fruitful in stimulating inquiry and true to the best of our limited critical knowledge, they should serve to a much larger extent than is now the case in human thought and endeavour. I am not now referring to such knowledge as having merely a pragmatic sanction. Usefulness is not the justification for the study of biology. Wisdom is justified of all her children. It is because we are the outcome of the biological process that a science of life will provide men with a truer understanding. Biology in the Greek sense will be founded on the biology of science.

Such recognition of its basal position has not yet been obtained by biology. The progress of industrialism, the application of physics and chemistry to national needs and national entertainment have won, for physical science, an appreciation and a belief which, even if unreasoned by the majority, has, I believe none the less, that sanction which gives weight

to convinced public opinion. Nor are there wanting those who look to the development of physical science, alone or in the main, as the lodestar of modern civilisation. They may point out that even in those industries, such as animal and plant husbandry, that are most biological in character, the subject-matter so far as it is biological is dealt with in an empirical way, untouched by modern biological principles. The selection of new varieties, and the whole process of animal breeding in the world of racing and agriculture, is a cult now as always entirely cut off by science, but possessing the vigour and initiative that physiological isolation confers. The real ecologists are those the fishermen, hunters, trappers-whose wonderful empirical knowledge and nomenclature contains more than can be reduced to the dimensions of that bed of Procrustes, our formal science of animal life. The advocate of physical dominance might even go further, and suggest that just in as far as modern civilisation had spread, to that extent had biological interests receded; that the world of biological evolution, the natural faunas and floras of the unmastered spaces, were bound to succumb to the dominance of civilisation; and that unless the biologists take heed, their very material for study will be reduced from the irreplaceable and almost infinitely rich variety of the wild, to the monotony of the house fly and house sparrow, and biology will become a mere ancilla to medicine and gardening.

The advocatus diaboli has put forth his pleadings. How is the counsel for the defence to state his side? He can point to the need for taking the long view. He is convinced that man as man, and not as a temporary phase in an unstable scheme of things, is a biological creation; that as part of his invincible faith in evolution, the study of the products of evolution will throw light on man's body, mind, and destiny. But just as dominance and freedom from dominance are creative but correlative, so the over-mastery of a dominant scheme, the tyranny of organisation may lead, after a period of effective differentiation to a slowing down of the national spirit. The reaction, the return to individualism, the principle of isolation as I have called it, is the natural result. The problems of social philosophy, even the problems of government and civil life-biology in the Greek sense-are illuminated by the principles of zoology, and if the flame is at present flickering, weak, with little pressure behind it, there are those in this and other countries who have faith in its future brightness. This light shining strongly in the west, is a rising star. The astronomer will be satisfied to take his pleasure in its understanding, but it will also pilot the way for those who in many countries have long wanted a lamp to their feet and a light to their path.

REFERENCES.

(1) Wilson, E. B., The Physical Basis of Life (Yale Univ. Press, 1923).

(2) Child, C. M., Individuality in Organisms (University of Chicago Science Series, 1915).

(3) Child, C. M., Senescence and Rejuvenescence (University of Chicago Press, 1915). (4) Huxley, J. S., Nature, Feb. 23, 1924.

(5) Shearer, Proc. Roy. Soc., London, B. vol. 96, 1923.

(5a) Child and Bellamy, ibid., p. 132.

(6) Tashiro, American Journ. Physiology, 33, 1913.

(7) Wilson, H. V., Journ. Exper. Zoology (5), 1907; Huxley, J. S., Phil. Trans., 1912. (8) Wood-Jones, Coral and Atolls, 1910.

(9) Iwanoff, P. P. (Regeneration and Ontogeny in Polychaets '), Dissertation (in Russian), St. Petersburg, 1912; Zeit. wiss. Zool., 1908.

(10) Allen, E. J., Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., London, 1921.

(11) Child, Origin of the Nervous System (University of Chicago Press, 1921). (12) Wheeler, W. M., Social Life in Insects, 1923.

(13) Eliot Howard, Territory in Bird Life, 1920.

(14) Haldane, J. S., Organism and Environment (Yale Univ. Press, Newhaven, 1917),

SECTION E.-GEOGRAPHY.

INTER-RACIAL PROBLEMS AND WHITE COLONIZATION IN THE TROPICS.

ADDRESS BY

PROFESSOR J. W. GREGORY, D.Sc., F.R.S.,

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

CONTENTS.

I. The Modern Increase in Population

II. The Races of Mankind

III. Geographical Principles

IV. Inter-Racial Relations :

1 (a) Racial Fusion. 1 (b) Racial Fusion in South America.

2 (a) Co-resident Distinctness. 2 (b) The Position in the United
States.

3 (a) Racial Segregation. 3 (b) The Probable Development in the
United States. 3 (c) Segregation in South Africa.

V. Tropical Colonization and the Future of Australia.

1. Supposed Unfavourable Factors in Tropical Climate:

(a) Heat.

(b) Moist Heat.

(c) Monotony in Temperature.

(d) Actinic Rays.

(e) Miscellaneous Influences.

2. Medical Opinion.

3. Improvements by Public Sanitation.

4. Old-established European Settlements in the Tropics.

5. The Development of Tropical Australia.

(a) Vital Statistics in Queensland.

(b) The Northern Territory.

(c) Queensland and the Sugar Industry.

6. Rate of Progress and the Drawbacks of the Tropical Climate.

7. Conclusion.

I. The Modern Increase in Population.

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THE problem of the present century, according to many observers, is the problem of the colour line. We are warned from one side of the danger to civilization of the rising tide of colour; and from the other of the peril to humanity from the rising tide of colour prejudice. The difficulties of the racial problems have been intensified by the unprecedented increase in the world's population. According to the estimates in 1696 of Gregory King, a pioneer in political statistics, the utmost population which England could support would be 22 million and that number would not be reached

until the year 3500 or 3600—in case the world should last so long.' In the year 1900, according to his expectations, the population would have amounted to only 7,350,000. These egregious miscalculations are a warning of the uncertainty of statistical forecasts as to population and an illustration of its surprisingly rapid increase in the modern world owing to the application of science to commerce, industry, and public health. This accelerated increase is mainly due to the European race, but it has been most rapid in Africa and Asia in consequence of the reduction by European administration of internal war, plague, pestilence, and famine. From 1906 to 1910, to quote the latter half of the last normal decade, the population of the world grew at the rate of doubling in sixty years. If this rate were to be maintained the 6,600 millions of people, which it has been calculated is the most that the world can feed, would be in existence in 120 years; and even if the food supply were indefinitely multiplied by the precipitation of the nitrogen of the atmosphere as a constant rain of manna, standing room on the earth, exclusive of the remoter Arctic and Antarctic lands, would be all filled when the population numbered 700 billion (i.e. million million) in the year 3000.

The rapid increase in the population of the world during the last halfcentury has had disturbing political influences. Thus many parts of India have apparently almost the maximum population possible under existing economic conditions, and the slow present increase is gained painfully to the accompaniment of irrepressible discontent. Countries which once had extensive empty lands have begun to close their ports to aliens, in obedience to the principle that each land must consume its own surplus population. The United States, the 'melting-pot' where the mixed races of the Old World were being fused into a new type, has adopted measures based on the growing belief, in the words of Lothrop Stoddard, that 'the book of race migrations must be closed for ever.' The halt at Ellis Island has already warned eastern and southern Europe that America is no longer an open asylum for refugees. The three great natural outlets from Asia have been closed by the prohibition of immigration thence into western America, by the 'White Australia' policy, and by the refusal of eastern and southern Africa to accept further Asiatic contributions to their needed enlarged supply of labour. The struggle for expansion, which was the ultimate motive of the World War of 1914-18, will inevitably be still more bitter and terrible if it become a struggle for existence between the White and Coloured races.

The effort to foresee the future progress of the world raises two contrasting visions. The increase in the wealth and prosperity of all the continents by the influence of the European race may be continued, either by colonization, as in America and Australia, or by administration, as in Asia and Africa. Asia, by improved industrial methods, and Africa, relieved from the slave trade, may continue to advance in co-operation with the European race instead of under its government; and European control may be voluntarily withdrawn as sympathetic alliance replaces the older systems of servitude. If those developments take place the twentieth century will be indeed a golden age.

The alternative picture is darker. Europe, during the past fifty years, like Portugal in the sixteenth century, may have taken on tasks beyond its power. The drain on the manhood of Portugal by its vast colonial

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