224 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



ditions, and, what is of importance for the end in view, they 

 contribute a share of food, so that a boy may have from 

 them some experience with the economic relation of animals 

 to men. 



Some persons who have observed the advancing process 

 of destruction of the natural world may have been brought to 

 consider the change as in the necessary and inevitable order 

 which comes with the higher development of man. They 

 may welcome indeed, some evidently do welcome the 

 chance that the ancient system may utterly disappear, and 

 all the earth become fields and garden places tenanted only 

 by those forms that man may have chosen to be his com- 

 panions. To many people who have a keen impression as to 

 the importance of man in the great economy, and no clear 

 sense of his relation to the natural order, this possibility is 

 doubtless attractive. It is not so to those who have gained 

 a clear idea of the place of man and the conditions of his 

 ongoing. 



There is reason to expect that the modern gains in the 

 cheapness and speed of transportation may before long bring 

 about a material change in the housing of the laboring 

 classes of our cities, so that they may be able to dwell in 

 somewhat rural conditions. In this way we may hope to 

 see these people once again brought where they may receive 

 a fuller share of the influences which have served so well 

 to lift our race to its elevated moral station. Working to 

 the same end is the spirit which is leading many manu- 

 facturers to place their establishments in the country, where 

 they can control the mode of life of the employees and their 

 families. Against the growth of the factory towns with 

 their sordid conditions, we may with pleasure set these rural 



