BIOLOGY AND HUMAN SOCIETY.
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exploiting, but avoided the fatigue of climbing trees and scaling
cliffs by enticing migrant swarms to settle in artificial hives in
which the prisoners could be suffocated as a preliminary to the
annexation of the fruit of their industry and thrift. The treat-
ment Human Society still accords the silk-worm resembles
that formerly accorded the cochineal Coccus. Mulberry groves
must be planted to supply the leaves on which the worm feeds
until it is ready to spin its cocoon: this task completed, the
worm must be suffocated before Man can reel its silk.
When the biological treatment Man accords his insect
captives is compared with that which Human Society, in its
developed stage, accords Man as an animal, we note that both
Man and Society penalise their respective victims for their
addiction to habits of industry and thrift. But while Man
encourages both habits in his victims while they live, and
deprives them of life in order to appropriate their savings,
Human Society does what it can to discourage both habits in
Man, but has the grace to wait till he dies before appropriating
to the uses of a particular generation what should be the capital
of the next. Both Man and Human Society do what is possible
to maintain the health of their respective captive communities,
but while Man attends to Eugenic measures and eliminates the
unfit among his slaves, Human Society despises Eugenic advice
and does all it can to increase the numbers of the unfit.
Turning from the useful living organisms Man exploits
on behalf of Human Society to those enslaved by Man to serve
Human Society, we note that the biological treatment captives
receive is less uniform than that given those merely exploited.
Next after Man, perhaps the most notable slave of Human
Society is the elephant. Emancipated in Africa ever since
Carthage was destroyed, and there, since then, only exploited as
a source of ivory, the animal has, in Asia, since the dawn of
history, been used as a beast of burden. Man is not the only
animal at times unable to realise his advantages; the Indian
elephant may, as a slave, have escaped extermination when the
last of its African cousins has shared the fate of the quagga.
Next after Man, perhaps the most familiar animal slave of Human
Society is the pig, and the contrast between what Human
Society has induced Biology to do in the cases of the elephant
and the pig is striking. Though we usually think of the elephant