THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 449 



i'oi an argument in its favor, for the actions of some people surely show 

 evidence of some connection to a long-tailed daddy. But we prefer to 

 bold to our belief of having been better created, proof of which we seem 

 to have in the clase uroximity such a large proportion of the Eve part 

 of man now take to the angel creation. 



EVOLUTION OF ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



The earliest secular history we have places man but little above the 

 beasts. In other words, an animal with a little more intelligence than 

 some of the other species so that the evolution of the animal kingdom be- 

 gan only after there had been some progress in the evolution of the mind 

 of man himself. The years have come and gone and centuries have gone 

 by. Gradually has there been revealed to man many of the hidden mys- 

 teries of nature, created by nature's God in the beginning of time, and 

 ouly brought to the mind of man at the close of the nineteenth century 

 and the beginning of the twentieth century. 



The street fakir said, "We are only reproducers. Is that all? Spurn 

 the thought. Someone says we are born this or that — this man a born cat- 

 tleman, that man a born hogman, this man a born banker, that man a 

 born merchant. How much of this is so? What is a born hogman? Is it 

 one whose antecedents have been hogmen for years? Or a born shep- 

 herd one whose parents for generations have been sheepmen? Nothing of 

 the kind, for the banker's son, if raised on the hog farm and he is intelligent 

 and industrious, can become a successful hogman, and the hogman's son, 

 if educated in a bank and he is intelligent and industrious, can become 

 the successful banker. 



The hereditary precaution necessary here is simply natural intelli- 

 gence. Environment and training does the balance. That heredity is 

 the foundation stone upon which we must base our improvement in our 

 animals is a proposition well established. More modern history informs 

 us of the different breeds of animals. The horse, descending from the 

 Arabian stock of centuries back until we have the draft horse, the road 

 horse, the trotter, the pacer and the runner, all having been evolved by 

 man's intelligence and care until today we have the breeding of the horse 

 brought to a science. The draft, the road, the runner, the trotting and the 

 pacing horse can be reproduced with just about as sure results as that a 

 potato can be made to reproduce potatoes. Cattle and sheep have been 

 herded and bred and cared for for centuries, and bred and cross-bred with 

 such care that today we have the distinctive breeds of cattle and the dis 

 tinctive breeds of sheep, and the respective breeds being so improved 

 upon by the intelligence of man until today can be. seen the splendid in- 

 dividuals of the different types of cattle scattered all over our land. And 

 the numerous flocks of sheep for mutton and wool scattered all over two 

 great continents. We are told that Abram was called and that his name 

 was changed to Abraham, and that he and his descendants were herders 

 of cattle and flocks. They had their horses! for some of them rode in 

 their chariots. They even had the ass, for you know that Balsam's ass 

 gave him a piece of his mind when he was permitted to speak. But the 

 poor hog — he was ostracised just as effectually as any poor heretic who 



