On May 18, about 30 professors and students from School of agriculture, Purdue University, Indiana, the United States, paid a visit to Beijing Jintai Art Museum.

　　Mr Yuan Xikun, director of Jintai Art Museum gave them a address with the topic of "man and nature". The following is the main contents of the address of Mr Yuan.

　　Nowadays the relationship between the human and the animal comes to close but unacquainted. It is commonplace for us to catch the sights that a bird is shot down by guns and even small fish is fished out. The sings of the frogs by the ponds and the tweets of the birds on the tree are rare in today's cityscape.

　　The human has ever been hand in hand with the animals. In the remote time, the tribes took the animal as their totem. Form the famed wild bull cling painting to the animal sculptures on the bronze ware unearthed at Yunnan province of China are all very vividly and lifelike. All of these are the fine evidence for the intimate between the primitive and the animals. But with the advance of the human beings, with the development of the science, the people has thrown themselvessintosthe exploration of the meaning of the individual existence and the outer-earth life while the origin of the human being and the relation between the human and the nature are getting faint and dim. The wild animals even were killed arbitrarily.

　　Enges has ever said that the human should not be glory in their conquest of the nature because the nature would make retaliate it sooner or later. Swazer, the great philosopher, thought the defect of the ethic lies in it only cover the human instead including the all the lives. The people found they are in the desert of boundless avarice after they made use of animals for two millions years. The Biology has taken the led in returning the science to nature through the study of the relationship between the human and the animal.

　　Mr Yuan is found of nature and a fun of animal. He led a life of Robinson's style in the jungle of Yunnan province, Southwest China in his young age. He threw himselfsintosthe creation of animal paintings. The natural figure, color, line and beauty of various animals are the wonders of the nature. The jungle experience gave him inspiration and an undiminished affinity for all the living things under the heaven and threw the trouble and sorrow away. One idea camesintoshis mind little by little that it is the duty of the artist to reveal the beauty of the animal to the people, making them wake to the relationship of the human and the nature.

　　Mr Yuan ever observed the life of bees. Man had the idea that it is a society of mother right. In fact, it is totally wrong. All the worker bees decide everything equally through their unique dance and no administer and at all.

　　It is totally unfair to call the scurviness of the human as animality. But as a matter of fact, the victor doesn't kill the defeat even in the struggle between the wolves. It may be called a virtue that there is not unruly in the mutual dependence and competence of the animal kingdom.

　　It is good news that our country now advocates environmental protection and pays attention to ethical as well as material progress. It came to understand the relationship between man and man, man and nature.

　　Background

　　About Purdue

　　From its stately red-brick campus on the West Lafayette bluffs above the Wabash River and at regional campuses and educational sites across Indiana, Purdue University touches the Greater Lafayette community, the state, the nation, and the world with a vast spectrum of instruction, outreach, and service. As Indiana’s only land-grant university, Purdue is an important partner with the state in myriad programs and services. As an acclaimed state-assisted public research institution, Purdue has a national and global reputation for excellent and affordable education.

　　Building on its traditional strengths in engineering and agriculture since its founding in 1869, the West Lafayette Campus today offers nearly 6,100 courses in more than 200 specializations through the schools of agriculture, consumer and family sciences, education, engineering, health sciences, liberal arts, management, nursing, pharmacy and pharmacal sciences, science, technology, and veterinary medicine. Programs of graduate study and research leading to advanced degrees are organized through the Graduate School.

　　Purdue is one of the largest four-year universities in the country, with 32,208 students enrolled in fall 2001 on its West Lafayette Campus. Purdue also offers degrees at four regional campuses and 11 School of Technology sites statewide, bringing its systemwide enrollment to 67,548.