BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



sheep brought over in the ships that soon followed the 

 Mayflower thrived and multiplied. Their chickens and ducks 

 found the meadows of Massachusetts as good a place to 

 pick up a living as the fields of Devonshire. In the woods 

 there was a larger fowl that the Indians prized. Carried 

 back to Europe it was called the Cock of India at first, 

 and later the turkey. So, to-day. North America's only 

 contribution to the list of domesticated animals is named 

 after a country in Asia Minor. But no more is the lordly 

 turkey allowed to roam the fields and roost in tallest 

 trees or windmills. He isn't even permitted to have his 

 feet on the ground. Traveling about the country one sees 

 these big birds in wire-bottomed pens. Bacteriologists 

 have learned that the earthworms and other natural food 

 of the turkey carry a deadly parasite that in the past has 

 wiped out whole flocks. Such a simple procedure as keeping 

 the birds off the ground has made turkey raising profitable 

 in the part of the country where they once proudly strutted 

 in the wild. 



In the same country in which the Indians numbered 

 less than ten million inhabitants, and then practiced a 

 severe limitation of offspring, the white inhabitants now 

 total a hundred and twenty million and are increasing 

 at a rate that will double the present population in a 

 half century. Where the Indians often went hungry, we now 

 study books on how to reduce. Farm surpluses cause the 

 government as much anxiety as the famines did in Egypt. 

 In part this is due to better machinery for cultivation and 

 transportation. Where the squaw with a clamshell hoe 

 had to work hard to grow enough corn and beans to feed 

 her own family, a man with a steel plow and cultivator 

 can grow enough for two families. To-day, with power 

 machinery, one farm family can produce enough to 

 provide four or more families with an abundance of 

 everything. 



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