Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 1.djvu/229

 TROPICAL LANDS AND WHITE RACES.

By Dk. T. p. MacDONALD. {Wednesday, April l^th. 1908.)

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, — In the words of Swinburne, 1 would first " thank with brief thanksgiving whatever gods there be" for having created so useful an institution as the London Tropical Society, which to the pilgrim of tropology in temperate climates is an oasis in the desert to those who journey towards the "holy land" of their longings. Here the sun- worshippers, as those who have heard the call of the Tropics and felt the fulness of its life in their veins might aptly be named, may meet to strengthen each other by mutual sympathies and by exchange of opinions, convictions, and experiences ; and so contribute, organically, to the advancement of tropical science, philosophy, and art.

In the second place, I have again to thank Dr. Sand-with and the Council of the Society for the privilege of reading this paper before j'^ou to-night upon so apparently abstract a subject as that of Tropical Lands and White Races.

Let me hasten to assure you, gentlemen, that if I believed this question to be one of merely abstract or perhaps academic importance you would have been spared such an infliction upon good nature. Not only do I think this question to be one of the utmost concrete importance in itself, but I consider, indeed I may speak in superlative language and say I am convinced that an understanding of the logic of tropical life is vital to the movement of tropical