NATURE AND MAN

Grey River Argus, 14 December 1938, Page 3

NATURE AND MAN

MYSTERIES OF LIFE, A FEW THOUGHTS. (By Leo Fanning fhe dense passage is blind and stiffen That crawls by a track none turn to climb Fo the strait waste place that the years -have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. Phe thorns he spares when is rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. • The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain. —From Swinburn’s “Forsaken Garden." What a wild welter of creation and destruction Nature is! Nature is ever in a ferment to turn dust into life and life into dust. Her organising and. disorganising forces are sometimes so clashing that they seem like farces Often Nature seems to be more concerned with the propagation and protection and perpetuation of nuisances than of good things. “Survival of the fittest,” the Darwinian says, but frequently one mav be more impressed b<< the survival of the unfit than the fit. . . .

Civilisation is getting ah increasing burden of degenerates, who are apparently as hardy a? they are useless. Many of them are constantly ip ana out of gaol, in ,and out of hospital. They live in vice, they have diseases of body and mind —hut do they die before thejir tij'ne? Ljfe clings to them as if it liked them. They in-, crease and and load their slimy weight upon society. Many or them pass four score years, and In all that time they have been a grievous nuisance to the World. I sometimes think of old Time passing tnem by in disgust, loth.to soil his sythe on them. 1

Let us go back to the roses. Gilbert Chesterton' once wrote about"the savagery of roses, but what does their armament avail against the aphis, the sluggish green-fly which preys, upon their tender roots? What use is the nnhis in the scheme of things? If the function, of the aphis was to wage war upon ragwort, biddy-bid and fennel, one could admire the marvellous powers of multiplication given by Nature

to this plague, but this insect is not m- < terested in rough or tough pasture, i Its choice is the rose. The world is 1 not.threatened with an over-running . by roses, and yet the rose has an enemy, which multiplies in myriads within a day or two. No doubt ants have a different view of the green-fly, for they farm the aphis, these insects are the dairyherds of some species of ants. Some genius among the ants long ages agj saw a use in the aphis, which was Induced to yield a sweet juice for Its captors. The ants muster the greenfly, run them into folds, get pastures for them and . “milk” them. The “milking” is a gentle massage by the ant’s feelers along the body of tne aphis, an' operation which, quickens anfl increases the exuding of the nectar. Perhaps the ant mind imagines that the incalculable multiplication oi the aphis is for the special benefit or

anus. Nature is kind to weeds. She gives . them strength for their rooming ana spreading and the most cunning arts for their seeding. Consider the blackberry, how It grows and grows and grows! This pest increases from blackberry suckers; it grows in from joints of its arms; it produces myriads of seeds, and is fiercely armed against interference. If the blackberry was the most precious thing on earth, Nature ‘could not be more concerned with its propagation and preservation. , The biddy-bid is another of Nature s favourite children. Like the biapksairv it tc n ranld coloniser, even

without the help of.it s burry seeds, which attach themselves to sheep ana other animals for widespread distribution Think also of the flying seeds oi thistle and the ability of other noxious weeds to cumber the earth. The more man tries to educate a plant t 0 serve him for food or other needs, the more Nature tries to. foil him. She seems to be ever jealous, of man’s efforts to improve on her ways or to hasten her own rates of evolution. Ker Mediterranean fly is not turned on to the prickly pear, but is reseived for the best orange tn some countries. Fire-blight does not bother the blackberry, but lays waste the best apple orchards. Always there is a blight or a bug in readiness to destroy man’s best productions of flowers or fruit. “Mail’s methods weaken the constitution of plants," someone says, but why should they? Why should not the carefully-tended weli-nourishe'd plants flourish better than' weeds which should choke one another to death? . Science has an eye on these things?

of course, and is hoping some day man may gain a complete mastery of Nature and set her working as meekly and meekly and'as obediently for him as the mildest slave of an eastern potentate—but, alas, man has a very long way to go in that field. After all there is something in the matter of the world that the chemists cannot find. They can bredk matter up into its 'basic elements, and Indeed get so far as believing that there is only one Kind of matter, which u* not really matter at all but a whirling and swirling of energy, a fussy pothei ot ions' and electrons. Think of the intangible unfiridable germ or the common cold in terms of lons ana electrons!

Well, it all comes back to this simple truth that man will never be able to fathom The infinity of tne Deity. The brilliant Fitzgerald hints at the problem in his version of Khayvam thus: — A Hair perhaps divides the False ana True; Yes; and a single Alif were the clue— Could you but find it—to the Treas-ure-house, And peraciventure to The Master too. / Whose secret Presence through Creation’s veins Running . Quicksilver-like eludes your pains; Taking all shapes from Man to Mali!; and ’ They change and perish all—but He remains

A moment guess’d—then nack behind the Fold Immerst of Darkness round tne Drama roll’d. Which, for the Pastime of Eternity, He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.

Even if man gains an ultimate mastery of insects, blights, __germs and weeds and makes matter and force his faithful servants, with never a fear of eccentricities, Old Nature may still laugh at him. A little tilt of the earth’s axis would make a sad wreck pfj all laboratories. A,ri occasional earthquake is a reminder that man is not yet captain of the'cosmos.