4 THE FEEDING OF ANIMALS 



necessities of existence without reference to utility as 

 measured by the needs of a higher form of life. The fiber 

 of the body must possess endurance, and it mattered 

 little whether or not the muscle could furnish a juicy 

 steak. The brute mother must defend her young and 

 supply it with milk, and this being accomplished, her 

 maternal functions ceased. She was neither so endowed 

 that she could open the fountains of her life to feed gen- 

 erously a not too grateful master, nor so submissive 

 that she would. The wild horse must be fleet and endur- 

 ing that he might escape the enemy, but not that he 

 might bear heavy burdens or win a contest in the pre- 

 scribed form of the race-track. 



In the lapse of centuries there have been many changes 

 in the relation of man to the animal creation. Bird 

 and beast in various forms have come to minister to 

 man's wants, and in their present domesticated condi- 

 tion are, in their turn, utterly dependent upon him for 

 the food and shelter which are necessary to their physical 

 welfare, or even existence. It is not too much to assert 

 that the domestic animal, in the artificial environment 

 imposed upon it, is entirely at man's mercy, even in 

 the development of those attributes and chaTacteris- 

 tics which otherwise would be determined by the demands 

 of an unaided warfare with nature. The juicy sirloin of 

 the shorthorn, the almost abnormal milk glands of the 

 champion butter cow, the delicate fiber of merino wool, 

 and the marvelous speed of the modern race-horse are 

 evidences of man's skill in recasting natural types into 

 forms of greater usefulness to him. From the animal 

 of nature, under the direction of a higher intelligence, 

 has proceeded the animal of civilization, an organism 

 obedient to the environment which has been created for it. 



