V. 



24 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



wonder that hunting men starved periodically, when it took, 

 estimated, forty acres of good hunting ground to sustain one 

 individual. 



It was inevitable that the time should come when man must 

 take better care of the wild animals or give up animal food. 



The first step was to hunt and destroy the wild animals that 

 preyed upon those that were of value to man,i and the next was 

 to spare the finest males and all females with young.^ Thus 

 were the first steps in domestication and the beginning of im- 

 provement instituted at substantially the same time. 



The next step was to provide food for this increasing stock 

 of valuable semidomesticated animals. This was done in two 

 ways. The easy way was to herd and drive the bunch to fresh 

 pastures where there was good water. This required a consider- 

 able force of men and horses, not only to herd the animals but 

 to protect them from robbers, because these herds were none too 

 plenty and the feeding lands none too extensive.^ 



The other plan of providing food was to supply it directly 

 from cultivated plants, confining the animals more and more as 

 natural feeding grounds became exhausted. This is the more 

 laborious of the two methods, but it is the one followed when 

 natural feeding grounds (plains) are not extensive, and it is the 

 one necessarily followed wherever lands become valuable. Thus 

 did man save to his own use and preserve from extinction not 

 only the dog and the horse, but all the animals good for food, 

 and thus, in a measure, has he become their servant and care- 

 taker in consideration of what they can do for him. 



1 To the knowledge of the writer a wolf hunt occurred in Illinois as late as 

 the very close of the last century, — I am quite sure in 1898. 



2 At the discovery of South America the Peruvian Indians, orAztecs, were 

 found to have already instituted an annual hunt by which all the animals of 

 a great region were rounded up in some mountain valley, driven to close 

 quarters, the worthless and dangerous beasts of prey systematically killed, and 

 the supply of meat taken not from the best, but from the common animals, 

 being careful to release the best for breeding purposes in order that the quality 

 of the supply should not deteriorate. 



^ Read again the story of Abraham and Lot, Genesis xiii, 7-1 1. 



