4 Our Food Mollusks 



tury been utilized on the Pacific coast in the manufacture 

 of fertilizer. Cod, mackerel, shad, and other valuable 

 food fishes of the Atlantic, within the memory of men 

 now living, were many times as abundant as now. At 

 the present rate of decrease, the lobster must soon disap- 

 pear from our eastern coast. Nearly every natural oyster 

 field on the Atlantic has been destroyed. Most of the 

 clam flats of New England, once immensely productive, 

 are now almost barren. 



But in spite of these depressing facts, there are many 

 hopeful conditions to which attention should be given. 

 Our natural resources may be separated into two groups, 

 namely those consisting of materials accumulated through 

 eons of time, which are replaced only by the infinitely 

 slow processes of nature, and resources that may be made 

 rapidly to perpetuate themselves under human direction 

 and control. To the first belong ore deposits, petroleum, 

 gas, and coal. These, once consumed, are gone forever. 

 The second group includes organisms useful to man. 

 Obviously the resources included in the first group should 

 be used judiciously and without waste, in the knowledge 

 that substitutes for them will one day be required. Those 

 of the second group may never disappear. 



While wanton destruction and waste are always deplor- 

 able, it must be admitted that even with the greatest care, 

 animals and plants useful to man would, if allowed to re- 

 main under natural conditions, soon become too few in 

 numbers to meet his requirements. The butchery of our 

 buffalos by hide-hunters and European " sportsmen " 

 naturally excited strong disapproval, but it hurried by 

 very few years their extinction, that was inevitable from 

 the occupation of their ranges by stockmen and agricultur- 

 ists. The great multitudes of pigeons inhabiting the 



