IN an address to Sections D and F of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in July 1932, Prof. H. B. Fantham, recently elected to the chair of zoology in McGill University, Montreal, essayed to interpret biology's message for the plight of modern civilisation (South African J. Sci., vol. 29, p. 533). Prof. Fantham regards the expenditure on education as excessive, and the subjects taught too many; his own ideal list includes general elementary science (including biology), the languages of the country, reading, writing, arithmetic, economic and human geography, history, some cultural subject like singing, needlework and cookery for girls, drawing and woodwork for boys, moral principles, and perhaps simple drill, anything beyond these to be paid for by the parents concerned. Elementary education alone should be free, for so-called free education is free only to the parents directly concerned and not to the community. The mechanisation of the modern world is a disharmony, which is narrowing and starving human life. Doles are “perhaps the greatest biological mistake in the social organisation of the present age”; relief should be made conditional on the giving of service. Generally, Prof. Fantham holds that there is too much administration, too much organisation, too many conferences and too much mechanisation, so that man's environment has become too artificial, and the result of the disharmony is expressed in instability and unrest. Some suggestions made by the author are that government must be by paid business managers trained in science and administration; that production must be adjusted to demand and the scientific organisation of distribution; that wages should be judged by their purchasing power; that the movement back to the land should be encouraged; that wars should cease and war debts be cancelled; and that eugenic measures should be employed to cope with problems of over-population.