THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF ANIMALS. 827 



THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF ANIMALS. 



By CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER. 



THE influence which the lower animals have had upon man- 

 kind has never been appreciated ; had it been, they would 

 have received more consideration at our hands. They not only 

 provide us with food, raiment, and a vast array of industries, but 

 they have been factors in the physical and intellectual develop- 

 ment of mankind. The beauty of the birds and insects, the splen- 

 did coloring of the fishes and reptiles, the quiet harmonies of 

 Nature and the problems they suggest, have insensibly had a re- 

 fining efi'ect, and aided in the evolution of the higher and aesthetic 

 senses. In a word, the so-called lower animals have been impor- 

 tant factors in producing the high civilization which marks the 

 Caucasian race of to-day. 



In glancing at the many forms which pay tribute to our wants 

 and requirements, the larger animals naturally attract the atten- 

 tion ; yet the greatest works, the most enduring monuments, are 

 those produced by the smallest and most insignificant creatures. 

 Such are the rhizopods minute marine forms almost invisible, 

 among the very lowest in the scale of life ; literal drops of jelly, 

 yet endowed by Nature with the power to secrete shells of rare 

 and beautiful shapes. So vast are their numbers that it has been 

 estimated that if they are as numerous down to a depth of six 

 hundred feet as they are near the surface, there are more than 

 sixteen tons of calcareous shells suspended in the uppermost one 

 hundred fathoms of every square mile of the ocean. 



These countless millions are constantly dying, and their shells 

 when released slowly sink to the bottom in a never-ending rain, 

 filling up the inequalities of the ocean bed, and forming a deposit 

 of ooze at a depth of not over twenty- four hundred fathoms sev- 

 eral feet in thickness, beneath which are layers of shells of an un- 

 known depth pressed into a solid mass. A prolific source of this 

 ocean rain is a rich spiked atom which has given its name to the 

 globigerina ooze that is almost universal in the deep sea at a 

 depth within the limitations given. 



The tendency of the rain of shells is to fill up ocean beds, cap 

 submarine hills and mountains, building them up until they en- 

 ter the zone of the reef-building corals. In this way these insig- 

 nificant creatures have aided in the growth of the globe, and, 

 when the deposits by heat or exposure to air are hardened, they 

 become girders of the crust. 



The ooze so deposited either fills up the ocean, or by some up- 

 heaval is lifted into the air and in time becomes covered with a 

 forest growth ; ages pass, and, by a depression of the crust, the 



