If we are unable to bring our surroundings into subjection to our
desires, we can often moderate our desires to the measure of our
surroundings.
The colonel of a volunteer regiment camping in Virginia came
across a private on the outskirts of the camp, painfully
munching on something. His face was wry, and his lips seemed to
move only with the greatest effort.
“What are you eating?” demanded the colonel.
“Persimmons, sir.”
“Good heavens! Haven’t you got any more sense than to eat
persimmons at this time of the year? They’ll pucker the very
stomach out of you!”
“I know, sir. That’s why I’m eatin’ them. I’m tryin’ to shrink
me stomach to fit me rations.”
(29)
* * * * *
Numerous are the animals that, escaping persecution, have
adapted themselves to the altered conditions. Was this
adaptation unconscious on their part? There was room and to
spare when it was in progress, and did not choice enter into the
problem? Or was it mere chance that they stayed near or even in
habitations, and with no more volition than the autumn leaves
that now filled the air?
It may be mere coincidence, but the skunk that lived under the
doorstep yet gave no sign of its presence; the raccoon that
occupied a clothes-line box and was not suspected; the opossum
that lived in a hollow tree within ten feet of the house
and was discovered only by accident--all suggest to me that
they considered the several situations, and realizing their
advantages in the matter of food supply, were willing to take
the chances; yet a fine bit of primitive woodland was not fifty
yards away.--C. C. ABBOTT, New York _Sun_.
(30)
* * * * *
Why should we not adapt our moral seed-sowing for character to the
different types of men as carefully as agriculturists do after close
study of the different types of soil?
“The greatest surprize to the agriculturist,” said Mr. David
G. Fairchild, “and one which will throw into confusion the
calculations of the economist, will come through the utilization
of what are now considered desert lands, for the growing of
special arid-land crops requiring but a fraction of the moisture
necessary for the production of the ordinary plants of the
eastern half of the United States, such as corn and wheat.
“We are finding new plants from the far table-lands of Turkestan
and the steppes of Russia and Siberia, which grow luxuriantly
under such conditions of aridity that the crops of the
Mississippi Valley farms would wither and die as tho scorched by
the sirocco.”--_The Technical World._
(31)
See POISONS AND MEDICINE.
=Adaptation, Lack of=--See ACCOMMODATION.