THE PROBLEM OF DOMESTICATION 245 



to prove fruitful in other ways than through its mineral 

 stores, it will be by the creatures which are adapted to its 

 climate and other conditions. At the present rate of increase 

 in numbers, the population of the world will, in the course of 

 two or three centuries, begin seriously to press upon the 

 resources in the way of food which the fields of the tropical 

 and temperate zones can supply ; the chances of the arctic 

 regions may then have much importance to our successors. 

 Moreover, in the case of the seals we find the peculiar 

 advantage that the animals are fed entirely from the sea, so 

 that the domestication of these forms would give to man a 

 means, the like of which he has never possessed, whereby he 

 would be enabled to harvest the food resources of the deep. 

 The beaver, particularly the North American form, offers 

 a most attractive opportunity for a great and far-reaching 

 experiment in domestication. On this continent, at least, the 

 creature exhibits a range of attractive qualities which is 

 exceeded by none other in the whole range of the lower 

 mammalian life. No other mammal below man shows any- 

 thing like the same constructive skill in the contrivance of its 

 habitations, or is able so to modify its habits of building to 

 meet the varied needs of its life. When this country was 

 first visited by man near one half of its area was occupied 

 by this species. It built its dams and dwelling-places and, 

 when necessary, excavated its canals along all the lesser 

 streams in the timbered regions of the northern districts. As 

 the destructive effects of civilization increased, the animal has 

 gradually, to a great extent, been driven away from its old 

 haunts, and where it remains it has, as the price of life, given 

 up its- architectural habits and betaken itself to the older and 

 simpler mode of living in a chance manner much as is now 



