48 Twciity-scz'ciitJi Aiiiiiial Meeting 



and hidden resources, and by ringing new changes and playing 

 new combinations on the various forms of matter. 



As unaided nature is barely self-sustaining, she is utterly 

 inadequate to cope with both natural and artificial losses ; artifi- 

 cial inroads must be recouped through artificial agencies or de- 

 pletion, if not extinction, is inevitable. Thus, if the hand of man 

 were to-dav withheld, and tlie primitive, closed-season principle 

 of strictly wild or natural reproduction were applied to all forms 

 of animal and vegetable life, the earth would soon be a desert 

 waste, stripped and depopulated. 



It is quite natural, for obvious reasons, that nearly all of the 

 discoveries since man appeared that have contributed to his 

 triumphs over nature in the production of animal and vegetable 

 life, should be confined to land flora and fauna. In the very 

 nature of things we cannot hope to control conditions on water 

 as on land, nor to coax nature's secrets from ocean's depths, )r 

 even from more restricted water areas, as easily as on land. In- 

 vestigation has developed the fact, however, that the same un- 

 ceasing warfare is waged m the waters as on wild or primitive 

 land areas, and that there is the same inability with the varied 

 forms of life to more than hold their own. As on land, we find 

 that the forces of nature merely balance, that natural gains are 

 checked by natural losses ; and that the moment man invades 

 this domain and becomes a factor in the losses without directly 

 or indirectly contributing to the gains, that moment depletion 

 begins. 



It was evidently a part of the Divine scheme, however, that 

 the waters should not be depleted, but should remain a fixed 

 and unfailing support for man; for, as with life on land, the 

 means were placed within man's reach whereby he might repay 

 the waters, could make complete restitution, through artificial 

 agencies for all artificial losses. It seems strange that the way 

 for man to thus square himself with the waters, a discovery of 

 such far-reaching importance and significance, should have been 

 overlooked until recent years ; for when the Creator provided 

 that many of the forms of water life, in order to survive in na- 

 ture's environment, must develop thousands upon thousands of 

 germs for each recurring period of reproduction — and each germ 

 a possibility for an adult of its kind — He not only proclaimed 

 the self-evident fact that tremendous odds were to be encoun- 

 tered, but purposely left an opening that was a standing invita- 

 tion to man to investigate and see if these possibilities could 

 not be converted into probabilities or actualities. And this con- 



