manner that the visitor's uncertainty was not dispelled by his maneuver. With a "young person," the process of adaptation is even more rapid and sure. The charwoman's daughter brought up as a lady yields to none in ladylike perfection. Napoleon even went so far as to propose that women should have no hereditary rank at all, but content themselves with the title of their consorts. Presumably his experience with the stalwart insistence of his otherwise plebeian sisters whom he had personally ennobled determined his attitude in that regard. But most of us are familiar with the career of the Honorable Lady Burnett, a woman of humble origin as her friends admit-once a milkmaid or (according to traducers) a barmaid, who became through an exalted marriage "the arbitress of the elegances for all the region about her husband's manor house." From the Morning Post one learns that "she used, queen-like, to reign; nay, pour at tea in the newest and tightest of white gloves," and with that undefinable je ne sais quoi which marks the true aristocrat! An aristocracy has been defined as "a social superstructure reared on a foundation of bestness." There is but one permanent basis for "bestness." This is implied in the thousand year old motto of the aristocratic Winchester College, "Manners makyth man, or in the modern vernacular, "Handsome is as handsome does." The vicar, himself of humble birth but aristocratic connections, admits freely that it is too late in the day to lay stress on lineage. We all claim Adam as a forbear, and not one of us has ever had even a single ancestor weak enough to die in infancy. Leisurer or laborer, each has weathered the storm; in that sense, all are noble alike. Genealogists also affirm that we unmixed English people are all of Plantagenet stock, most of us through the first three Edwards, descended from William, Alfred and Charlemagne. Indeed, one eminent authority classes all Englishmen together as the "inbred descendants of Charlemagne," and Charlemagne (as we know) was at the head of a League of Nations, being at once. King of France, Emperor of Germany, and Overlord of Europe. Noble blood indeed is ours, but unfortunately so many share it that it can not serve as a test of aristocracy. Again, large numbers of our so-called nobility have arisen through long years of struggle directed toward that end. Social extrication is a form of hard work, and labor of whatever kind mars the soul as it wrinkles the brow. A furrowed face is of itself a badge of serfdom. A mind too alert, an ambition too urgent, tends to defeat the purpose of social adornment. To diffuse sweetness and light is not an arduous occupation. Indeed to give thought to it or to make it a result of definite effort is to fail in the most important element. The leisurer who goes down into the East End to mend the manners of the poor would do better to confine himself to awarding the conventional goose and bottle of ale at the happy season of Christmas. Those who have pursued this policy enjoy a devout gratitude heightened by its rarity. If life for the laborer was all ale and goose -or beer and skittles, as vulgarly paraphrased-no one would know his place, and the barriers betwixt laborer and leisurer so carefully built up in the long centuries of England's glory would be completely broken down. Browning paints the ideal leisurer as a king who "lived long ago in the morning of the world" with a forehead "calm as a babe new born." This is an enchanting ideal, but the further description (so familiar that I need not quote it here) does not fit their lordships of to-day. No one would take it for a portrait of Northcliffe, Carson, or Birkenhead, whose bustling activities keep the realm in turmoil. An aristocracy founded on labor of mind or hand is not a class of leisurers. Like my Lord Bottlebrush and the "Duchess of Draggletail" in Thackeray's satire, however high the circle in which they move, their manifest lack of noble repose only swells the confusion. Moreover, no genuine aristocracy can be founded solely on wealth. The "bounder-nobility"-as an irreverent press styles them are noble in their own eyes alone. In an exalted circle money should never be thought of, much less mentioned! The bee queen builds no cells and gathers no honey. No increment of beebread or royal jelly is due to her own activities, or received by inheritance. Queen and environment are alike parts of one system. So it should be with a true aristocracy. No quest of gold, no promotion of enterprise, no regret over the past, no worry for the future, no will to know, no call to govern, no mission to control, no fear of loss, no hope of gain, ought to intrude to break the perfect. peace. Kept in place by a reverent society, the Lord of Leisure need only pose as the glint of a sunbeam across the trail of the toilers, merely strew flowers along the pathway of life, in short be like Roses in their bloom Casting their petals ever on the grass II To all this there is an intensely practical side. If aristocracy is to endure (and without it this would be a dreary world indeed) it must be constituted aright. It must reject the false bases of heredity, effort and wealth. It must not be the reward of dis tinction, nor be attainable by any competitive examination. Its door should open to all on equal terms, even though straight the gate and narrow the way. The present House of Lords, now swollen to seven hundred members, including almost everybody able and willing to pay the price, will die of its own accord. Let it alone. Let the climbers of yesterday keep on climbing, while we remove the ladders behind them. Let the men who replenish the party treasuries receive in the name of our gracious King— our sole true aristocrat-whatsoever honors their patriotism deserves; but for the good of society let us build a new class in a new way. Should we fail in that endeavor the iconoclasts of the day will cast us all into the melting-pot from which no leisurer returns, an upshot the vicar would sadly deprecate. To select noblemen by primogeniture is a process comparable to choice by loaded dice; the cast is made before the heir is born. Nothing could be more undemocratic, nothing in reality more unfair to men and women of the race in general. Then let our lords be chosen by lot from among the people at large, let us pick a certain number of babies to be our future leisurers, and feed them on royal jelly1 or the nearest parallel to that condiment our gracious King may secure. All expense involved should of course be carried by the people. In the United Kingdom are some 48,000,000 men and women. Let each pay alike; the assessment would then be so small that no one would even notice it. Let each contribute say a penny yearly for social inflorescence-for the perfected blossom of humanity. Such trifling levy would amount in the aggregate to £200,000 sterling, which, judiciously invested, would yield an assured annual income of £10,000, a sum quite adequate to provide for a leisurer throughout life. And the contribution by everybody of one shilling, a tax still absurdly small, would support twelve members of the new aristocracy each year. The necessary sum once collected, the infant chosen should be entirely healthy, and so attested by a Court physician accustomed to the needs of the leisure classes. It ought also to be a manchild, and its future mate, having no title in her own right, would become a "Lady" by courtesy, even as now the wife of the knighted grocer or jockey is recognized as "Lady" Jones or Atkins because her husband has been touched by the flat of the King's sword and allowed to write "Sir" before his name. Only through an impartial selection may aristocracy and democracy be satis 1 This expression is of course purely figurative, because no product of Cross and Blackwell serves our indicated purpose. It is with the general problem of perfected environment that we have to deal. factorily reconciled; and only when begun before effort, ambition or deterioration has set in can the budding leisurer be adequately trained by nurse and butler in the thoughts and manners proper to a perfect lord. Otherwise, less lovely traits might have become stiffened beyond remedy. As his lordship grows up, the necessary allowance should come to him in regular sums only. He should never forestall, never hoard, never gamble, never speculate, never go into trade, never run into debt, never have anything left over after Christmas! He should support society as society has supported him; but chiefly he and the lady he may happily choose must remain through life "on the hills as gods together, careless of mankind.” True, as the noble Lord Tennyson once observed, "kind hearts are more than coronets," but there is nothing in the plan to inhibit possession of both at once. A coronet, moreover, may be very becoming as well as very welcome to My Lady. For our new-made lord will never marry for money nor as a rule where money is— all dowry acquired being turned over to the state; and what more exquisite pleasure than that of a young maiden unexpectedly chosen for the high distinction of a coronet! Let us also notice the amazing widening of the possible range of choice when no dowry need be sought. Doubtless a new title ought to be devised for the consummate flower of leisure. Lord, Duke, Earl, Knight-all these hark back to the discarded emblems of war, "the faded fancies of an elder world." The vicar himself, I believe, was undecided, but the plan developed from hints given in his discourse should not fail just because a suitable name is not immediately forthcoming. The hellenistic term, "Bianthine," "flower of life," would be appropriate, but it seems rather long, used as we are to the abrupt Saxon "Lord and Lady," or the Norman "Sir." "Flovite" (flos-vita) might do; represented by the letters F. V. it would be a natural contrast to M. P., and a pleasing reminiscence of F. F. V., the designation of certain Elite of the United States of America. This again suggests that the word Elite itself, a good Norman expression much valued by our Gallic allies, may be the term we are seeking. In any case, the title selected should in some way indicate one chosen from among many, first among equals, the bloom of existence, the triumph of aspiring democracy reaching the goal of perfection amidst the leaven and the levelling of the commonry. And we hope that the admirable vicar may find ample support in his noble crusade to make the British peerage once more a counsel of perfection. THE FOOD RESOURCES OF THE SEA By GEORGE W. MARTIN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF BOTANY, RUTGERS COLLEGE, RIMITIVE man got his food as his competitors did—that is PRIM to say, he picked it up or killed it where he could find it. Very early in his civilized career he ceased to be a hunter and began to cultivate the land; in fact, the beginnings of civilization and of agriculture were contemporaneous. Since that time the pressure of increasing populations demanding to be fed has been a prolific source of human strife. There are not lacking economists who would maintain that the recent catastrophic war in Europe was the direct result of an increasing demand for food on the part of the rapidly multiplying German nation. East, in THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY for December, 1921, points out that the agricultural resources of the United States can in all probability not support in reasonable comfort more than two hundred million people and that the present indications are that our population will reach that figure within the next century. Furthermore, we can not count on importing food indefinitely, since by the time our own population reaches its limit, the now scantily peopled parts of the world will produce little or no food in excess of the needs of their own greatly augmented populations. His is but one of many voices warning us that there is a limit to the number of human beings whom the earth can support, and however we may disagree with the various estimates as to what the limit may be, we can not doubt that it exists, and that, historically speaking, we are rapidly approaching it. The purpose of this article is, however, not to consider this question in detail, but merely to point out one source of food of which the possibilities are still largely unrealized. If we were to-day still depending upon the chase as the main source of our food, most of us would be dead, or, rather, we should never have been born. Yet so far as the oceans, which cover three fourths of the surface of the earth, are concerned, we have made little essential advance over the methods of the primitive fishermen. The flocks and herds of the sea still roam freely in their native haunts, and we cast our lines and nets over their feeding grounds, and catch what we can. Our operations are on a larger |