CHAPTER II 



BETTER PLANTS AND ANIMALS 



Still will the seeds, though chosen with toilsome pains 



Degenerate, if man's industrious hand 



Cull not each year the largest and the best. VERGIL 



7. Plants and animals improved by man. All of our culti- 

 vated plants and domestic animals have been so improved that 

 they serve man's purposes better than the wild parents from 

 which they came. We can still gather pecans, strawberries, 

 plums, and persimmons in the wild state, but the selected, cul- 

 tivated sorts are of greater size and better flavor and are very 

 much more productive than those which wild nature offers us. 



Beef and dairy breeds of cattle have been developed, each 

 distinct from the other, and even among the dairy breeds them- 

 selves we have great diversity. Five races of corn had already 

 come into existence before the discovery of America (Fig. 6). 

 Recently, special strains of alfalfa resistant to cold and others 

 resistant to drought have been developed. Wheats have been 

 produced that are resistant to drought, and others that are 

 resistant to rust. Indeed, the possibility of improving plants 

 and animals so that they will be resistant to diseases has great 

 promise in modern agriculture. 



8. When plant improvement began. In case of most of our 

 cultivated plants the exact period in which their cultivation be- 

 gan is unknown. A Swiss botanist 1 enumerates two hundred 



1 Alphonse de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants. 1882. 

 8 



