.Iiitcrican /■'islwrics Society. 47 



forms of water life ; hence, to be understood by all, it has seemed 

 necessary to include much that is obvious to the more experi- 

 enced. 



Ages ago, before the advent of man on mother earth, the 

 reproduction of all forms of annual and vegetable life appears 

 to have been so adjusted to environing conditions that the net 

 increase or decrease of any given form or species was imper- 

 ceptibly slow. Indeed, since natural laws have not changed, 

 we may well believe that centuries, if not ages, must have elapsed 

 before natural evolution insured an abnormal predominance or 

 led to extinction. The universal law then, as it is to-day in 

 strictly wild or natural areas, was that natural increase barely 

 balanced natural losses, so that the various species iov the most 

 part merely held their own. 



The entrance of primitive man upon the scene, however, was 

 the injection of a mighty factor into the economy of nature's 

 forces, for man was to be a friend and ally of many existing 

 forms, and an enemy of others. Considered merely as an ani- 

 mal, man's advent projected another and a keen competitor into 

 an arena where the struggle for subsistence and existence was 

 already fierce. 



But man's mission, although destructive in some ways, was 

 also creative, for his part in the scheme of creation was to con- 

 quer and subdue, and outdo nature by harmonizing and pacify- 

 ing her warring forces. Being endowed with at least the^germs 

 of intelligence, he discovered, in course of time, as his numbers 

 increased, that he must of necessity create if he would survive 

 to multiply and replenish the earth ; for otherwise, with man as 

 a merely destructive agent, the earth would eventually be di- 

 vested of all forms of animal and vegetable life available for his 

 subsistence. In course of time, it dawned upon man that God 

 merely pushes the button and man must do the rest — or starve. 

 The Creator furnished the raw material and fornuilated the inex- 

 orable laws governing it ; and while man is powerless to create or 

 annihilate a single atom, he is yet endowed with the cunning 

 to so lead and direct the elements and forces of nature, and to 

 so interpret her reproductive methods, as to multiply results 

 many fold. 



And thus down through the ages has man waxed mighty in 

 numbers and power ; demonstrating and increasing, from time 

 to time, as he grew in intelligence, his superiority over unaided 

 nature's productive power, through discoveries of latent forces 



