The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1912. SOUTH AFRICA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 95, 17 December 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1912. SOUTH AFRICA.

Tlio many changes taking place in South Africa may bo said to now include the gradual growth of a cordial understanding between the scientist and the farmer, and the forsaking of crude and old-time methods by the most conservative of peoples. Not long ago a noteworthy address was delivered by Dr. Theiler, President of the South African Association .for the Advancement of Science, remarkable in many ways, but especially so as illustrating the new relations between the

scientist and the man on the land. It is not so long since science treated but very lightly the simple theories of the fanners who, as pioneers, first came in contact with the host of Africa’s plagues over lying in wait for man and beast, while the farmers, having gained at least something in the hard school of experience, withheld their confidence from men with whom they were not in touch. But the change has come, and Dr. Theilcr, speaking with authority, says that he cannot hut sympathise with the people, and adds: “Their observations were in the majority of instances correct, and 1 have no hesitation in saying that in most of my work first of all 1 relied on the information given by the sons of the soil.” No doubt observation which is valuable has generally been accompanied by theory which is often untenable, but the observation is the ground of everything, and if without science the farmers are blind, without the farmers science, which concerns their calling, is none too certain, Many years ago the hunters discovered the great danger of flies as the carriers of disease. They could go no further, but they at least indicated the way to the man of science, who detected the poisonous parasite carried and discovered the existence of reservoirs of disease in healthy men and beasts from whom the blood-suck-ing fly gathers the virus he conveys to his victims. The destruction of the carrier must destroy, or at least restrict, the disease as has been shown by the large measure of success achieved by the Americans in checking yellow fever by destroying the mosquitoes at Panama, and this may serve the purpose of man even if he cannot deal with the parasite direct. As in this country—and in every other country—the farmer in South Africa has much to learn from science, hut he can also help science by his observation and experience.