Sea Farming 5 



northern states east of the Mississippi half a century ago, 

 met their fate largely through the destruction of their 

 nesting and feeding places. Fishes, oysters, clams, and 

 other animals propagating in a natural state, have rapidly 

 decreased when used for food. Even the most prolific 

 have proved to be anything but inexhaustible. But even 

 if these forms had been used without waste, their final 

 failure as sources of food would have been merely post- 

 poned. This inevitable destruction only becomes deplor- 

 able when it fails to be accompanied by an effort to do- 

 mesticate, or in adequate measure to control the perpetua- 

 tion of the vanishing form; for such effort in the past has 

 in nearly all cases been marvelously successful. Man's 

 achievements in domestication have been possible largely 

 from the fact that he has nearly always been able to 

 overcome in great measure the vast wastefulness of na- 

 ture. In a natural state, seed is produced in profusion, 

 but its growth is left largely to chance, and its destruction 

 is enormous. Usually with little effort on man's part, 

 intervention results in a rapid increase in the number of 

 individuals. 



Whenever terrestrial animals and plants have been do- 

 mesticated, the achievement has consisted not merely in 

 accelerating the rate of reproduction, but in controlling 

 nearly every condition on which their lives depended, with 

 an effect so far-reaching that most of them bear so little 

 resemblance in structure and habit to their wild ancestors 

 that the relationship would hardly be suspected. Indeed, 

 the original forms from which many of them were de- 

 rived, have been lost to human tradition and are entirely 

 unknown. How great some of these changes are is il- 

 lustrated in the many known descendants of a wild 

 mustard plant. Among them are the numerous vari- 



