THE PROBLEM OF DOMESTICATION 



253 



legions press on towards the great accomplishment of a 

 higher and nobler life. 



No one, however well he may conceive the nature and 

 history of the organic hosts of the earth, can hope to convey 

 to the general reader an adequate sense of their majesty or 

 the wonderful part they have played in the history of the life 

 which has culminated in mankind. The largest words are 

 freighted with too little meaning, and even the metaphors 

 drawn from human associations fail to convey a sufficient 

 picture of these enduring organizations which have enabled 

 living beings to meet the difficulties of their long contest 

 with this rude world, and to win the advance they have 

 gained. The reader will have to tax his imagination to pic- 

 ture, it may be, a quarter of a million species dwelling in the 

 same field, each united with the other in the method of 

 exchange in such a way that the withdrawal of any one form 

 is likely in some measure to change the estate of every 

 other. In some cases this removal of one species means the 

 loss of the life of many and perhaps the better opportunity of 

 other neighbors; again, the influence on remoter members 

 of the society may be so slight as to escape detection. Yet 

 it is doubtful if the slightest change in the .population of a 

 biologic province can be brought about without some effect 

 upon all the members of the society. It is a vast, sensitive 

 thing, fit to be compared with the living body where every 

 cell lives in accord with every other of the frame. 



So long as the organic hosts were in the prehuman stage 

 the maintenance of the accord was easily and naturally 

 attained. Species arose and perished, each in turn effecting a 

 simple reconciliation with the others, grasping only so much 

 room and food as was necessary for its proper support. But 



