MODERN ADAM

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 15, 18 January 1930, Page 20

MODERN ADAM

TEST IN HUMAN VIRILITY

Tho Department of Lands and Forests has refused to grant the request of Mr. Burt M'Connell, of New York, for a permit to enter the New Brunswick forest wearing only a pair of spectacles, reports the Montreal correspondent of the "Daily Express," London.

Mr. M' Connell had arranged to enter the New Brunswick forest without clothes, food, or equipment of any kind, and stay there for three months, in order to demonstrate .that the' virility of the human race has not declined since Adam's time.

"If Mr. M'Connell wishes to enter the woods like an ordinary individual," says the Minister <of Lands, "no obstacles will be placed in liis way. "Ho will obtain, in fact, every assistance. My Department, however, will not be a party to a ridiculous Adam and Eve exploit." The refusal, says Mr. M'Connell, will not in the least affect his proposed experiment. The interpretation he puts on the refusal is that he has been denied only his special request that persons be excluded fro: thirty miles of territory while he is travelling with only a pair of spectacles to clothe himself. Mr: M'Connell, who has already left New York, intends to keop a diary on birch-bark, with a charcoal pencil.

The place to which he is going—he is not specifying it precisely, because he does not want any photographers about —ia a highland where the head waters of three rivers converge.

A local committee will escort him there to verify his story. The altitude ranges from 3000 to 7000 feet, "I imagine that the first night will be rather uncomfortable, because I wont have any clothes," said Mr. M'Connell on the eve of his departure.

Mr. M'Connell doeß not expect to have time to obtain any food the first day, but that does not trouble him. He has often fasted for a long time. He once in Seattle went without food for seven dayes, and then -broke a local V.M.C.A. broad jump record.

Mr, M'Connell, if ho becomes ill while in the woods, expects to fast himself back to health. He hopes to eat nothing but meat. He cites Vilhjalmur Stefansson's. recent success in living healtkiljr" on meat for more than. a year.