100 YEARS AGO

Mr. H. A. Bryden contributes to the Fortnightly Review for January an article on the decline and fall of the South African elephant. It appears that the wild elephant has now practically ceased to exist south of the Cunene and Zambesi rivers. About the year 1830, elephant hunting in Cape Colony was prohibited by the British Government. Since that time, remaining herds have been carefully protected, and they still roam the dense jungles of the Knysna Forest and the Addo Bush in large numbers. It is a curious illustration of what a little timely preservation will do for wild creatures that often within a few miles of Port Elizabeth and Mitenhage there are strong troops of these animals, while one may travel elsewhere fifteen hundred miles up country and not succeed in finding a single wild elephant.

From Nature 22 January 1903.

50 YEARS AGO

The Nutritional Panel of the Food Group of the Society of Chemical Industry has arranged a series of meetings devoted to the subject “Food and the Future”... Mr. F. Le Gros Clark spoke on the “Yardstick of Population” and posed the question, “Will there soon be too many of us?”, pointing to an eventual finite limit to the population that could be supported by the world. Famines have always been local and temporary, never of world dimensions, but the real cause for alarm is that no one can foresee in what precise corner of the world hunger may occur... Mr. Le Gros Clark traced the growth in population over the centuries, suggesting an eventual total of 8,000–12,000 million before stability is reached. The problem of their food supply requires not mainly a technological transformation but a revolution in the habits of men and methods of farming — an agrarian revolution on a world-wide scale. The initiation of this revolution, he said, should have started fifty years ago, before the pressure of population had become so great. Nowadays, we cannot be excused because of ignorance, as perhaps could our grandfathers, who had less factual knowledge. Most nations to-day, protested Mr. Le Gros Clark, are not giving the agricultural scientist and food chemist half the chance they should have of meeting the challenge.

From Nature 24 January 1953.