“You mustn’t call natural selection nonsense,” he said. “I know all about that, at any rate. I can’t tell whether liquids tipped off the shore will fall into the river, because I don’t understand hydraulics. I don’t know whether your machinery makes a hell of a noise every morning, for I’ve never studied acoustics. I don’t know whether it stinks or not, because I haven’t read your expert’s book on ‘The Nose.’ But I know all about adaptation to environment. I know that some of the lower organisms do really change with their changing conditions. I know there are creatures so low that they do survive by surrendering to every succession of mud and slime; and when things are slow they are slow, and when things are fast they are fast, and when things are filthy they are filthy. I thank you for convincing me of that.” He did not wait for a reply, but walked out of the room after bowing curtly to the rest; and that was the end of the great conference on the question of riparian rights and perhaps the end of Thames Conservancy and of the old aristocratic England, with its good and ill. The general public never heard very much about it; at least until one catastrophic scene which was to follow. There was some faint ripple of the question some months later, when Dr. Horace Hunter was standing for Parliament in that division. One or two questions were asked about his duties in relation to river pollution; but it was soon apparent that no party particularly wished to force the issue against the best opinions advanced on the other side. The greatest living authority on hygiene, Professor Hake, had actually written to _The Times_ (in the interests of science) to say that in such a hypothetical case as that mentioned, a medical man could only do what Dr. Hunter had apparently done. It so happened that the chief captain of industry in that part of the Thames Valley, Sir Samuel Bliss, had himself, after gravely weighing the rival policies, decided to Vote for Hunter. The great organizer’s own mind was detached and philosophical in the matter; but it seems that his manager, a Mr. Low, was of the same politics and a more practical and pushful spirit; warmly urging the claims of Hunter on his work-people; pointing out the many practical advantages they would gain by voting for that physician, and the still more practical disadvantages they might suffer by not doing so. Hence it followed that the blue ribbons, which were the local badges of the Hunterians, were not only to be found attached to the iron railings and wooden posts of the factory, but to various human figures, known as “hands,” which moved to and fro in it.