MISSIONARY SOCIETY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 105, 30 October 1935, Page 6

MISSIONARY SOCIETY

That necessity is the. mother of invention is a complete fallacy, said Lord Raglan to the Anthropology section of the British Association recently The savage remains a savage because he never invents or discovers anything Every invention of which the history is known has been made in some centre of wealth, leisure, and culture, continued Lord Raglan. People who arq engaged in the struggle for the bare necessities of .life cannot aflord time to experiment.

Any tendency on the part of the savage to act in any way differently from his ancestors is regarded as treason calculated to bring ill repute to the whole community. It was difficult to believe that people of very low culture spent hours and hours rubbing two sticks together just to see what would happen, and so discovered fire-making. The cradle was another alleged primitive invention. Savage mothers, according to the theory, had learned by experience that babies should be rocked to sleep, and so devised simple rocking machines in the form of cradles. Not only do most savage babies get on very well without being rocked, but our doctors have now decided that rocking is definitely harmful to babies. The practice of rocking babies was derived from the ancient custom of putting new-born infants in a boat, as illustrated by the story of Moses in the bulrushes.

George Howes, "Trout Research in New Zealand." 9.0: Weather. Station notices. 9.5: A 8.8.C. recorded programme. "Old Words to New Music." A musical satire. This programme purports to show in humorous vein what would happen in these days of commercialism in the theatre, "if William Shakespeare were replaced on earth, poor and unknown, and laced, with the problem of selling for production, his play "Hamlet," 10.15: Another interlude with the Coconut Grove Ambassadors. 10.30 to 11.0: Dance music.