Life isn't much fun for the lingula, a poor little shell-fish Evolution forgot, which has remained without change for 25 million years, but for you and me and the next guy life is, after all, and biologically speaking, roughly worth-while. Such was the conclusion Mr. C. E. Palmer put before a recent meeting of the Natural History Society, held in the Biology Lab.

Down the Ages.

It is not, said Mr. Palmer, that the ascent of man can be traced in a steady line upwards and onwards. There have been plenty of zigzags, detours, false starts, corners that were never rounded, and back-slidings. Cases of retrogression are almost as striking as those of progress. But down the ages and through the maze of the existing species of the animal kingdom can be traced a certain increase of the organism's control over the natural forces in which it is placed. The evolutionary trend is to enhance this control through greater complexity in the nervous system and sense-organs.

A Great Step.

Social life was a great step forward in increasing the survival-chances of animals. Ants, bees, the social insects, and some lower animals, do what they must—act almost entirely through the compulsion of their inherited, rigid instinct pattern. But the personality of a human being, though he is endowed with a certain number of similtr elementary urges, is shaped and created by the society into which he is born he no longer depends on his inherited tendencies to equip him for the life-struggle—he is heir to the unbiologically transmitted social tradition. Through the cumulative effect of social and cultural tradition, man has risen to his present proud place—the ape that walks erect has attained to a greater control over his environment than has any other species. Since this is the biological destiny of the race, it becomes the justification of the individual's life in the race's continuity.

Risk It.

Mr. Palmer's was an extraordinarily interesting address at the meeting which the Nat. Hist. Soc. arranged. So far this year this maligned body has held a field expedition, a dance, and some meetings—which have all been excellent entertainment, and sometimes more than that. Anybody from the main building who has a scientific kink would do well to risk the forbidding atmosphere of the Science Wing to pay the Nat. Hist. Soc.'s affairs a visit.

Judge: who was driving when you collided with that car?

Drunk (triumphantly): None of us; we were all in the back seat.