4 DOMESTIC A TI. i> ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



provides an ample and assured food supply in its domesticated 

 animals and cultivated crops. 



To be sure, a certain amount of meat still comes from game 

 like the deer and the moose, but the proportion is small and is 

 growing smaller every year. The pioneer, like the Indians, de- 

 pended largely on the hunt, but the buffalo is extinct and the 

 game animals generally are restricted to the protected preserves 

 where they linger only by virtue of stringent laws. 



Fish have been strictly undomesticated in the past, but now 

 all the promising rivers and lakes are systematically " stocked," 

 so that even these lowest of all food animals are almost half 

 domesticated, in that they are systematically cared for. Any 

 way we study the problem we always arrive at the same conclu- 

 sion, namely, that we are absolutely dependent for food upon 

 the products of plant and animal life. 



Animals and plants as sources of clothing. Primitive man 

 clothes himself in skins, like the Eskimo, if he needs their 

 warmth, or in grasses, like the Fiji islander, if he does not. 

 Civilized man, however, refining upon savage customs, weaves 

 a cloth out of the fiber of the pelt or of the leaf, and cuts him- 

 self garments that fit the body and lend themselves to its move- 

 ments. In this way the wool of the sheep and the fiber of the 

 cotton and the flax furnish the material out of which the world 

 clothes itself. 



Aside from furs, and many of these come from lambs and 

 from cats, we draw our clothing supply from animals and plants 

 living under the direct management and control of man, that 

 is, domesticated. The wool of the sheep, the fur of the vicuna, 

 and the hair of the llama and the alpaca are all body coverings 

 shorn for spinning. The fiber of cotton and of flax represent 

 two of our principal crops the world over, and the silk that is 

 spun by the insignificant worm represents an industry involving 

 thousands of people, millions of worms, and acres of mulberry 

 trees. In clothing, therefore, as in food, our supply is mainly 

 drawn from domesticated races. 



