DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS 25 



a| Need for clothing and shelter. Food was not the only need 

 oi man supplied by the beast and bird of the forest. The skins 

 were good for clothing and for tents, enabling the primitive 

 "ujjhunter to leave his cave and other natural shelters, and erect 

 his home wherever inclination or necessity dictated. The skins 

 ^tp{ those taken for food were, however, not enough to meet 

 wa this need, and the world over animals with especially fine body 

 lit icovering have been hunted almost to the point of extermina- 

 in don for their fur, originally as a matter of necessity but in these 

 latter days as a matter of luxury and profit.^ So relentless has 

 X jeen that warfare, and so systematically has it been conducted, 

 M that our valuable fur-bearing animals are nearly exhausted and 

 ;si we ourselves will soon face the same issue with respect to these 

 ei animals that our barbarian ancestors faced with respect to food 



rimals, — domesticate or go without. 

 Even this has not fully met our need for the products of the 

 cuiimal body, and many species with a long coat have from time 

 immemorial been shorn of their fleece, the "wool " to be woven 

 into cloth and the animal saved to grow another crop. Thus did 

 the scarcity of animals add one more step in our march of civili- 

 'zation, and add the loom to our industries. 



Even this was not enough. The wool of sheep and the hair 

 of goat and alpaca alone could not meet our new demands for 

 fabric. Then came the resort to vegetable fiber, not only for 

 clothing, but for cordage to take the place of the more expen- 

 sive, and at last impossible, dried sinew and leather lariat.^ Thus 



^ The Hudson Bay Company was founded in 1670, and chartered by the 

 British government with special privileges to hunt fur-bearing animals in the 

 Canadas, especially in the Hudson Bay territory. These hunters and trappers 

 were really the first explorers, for they not only subsidized the Indians to hunt 

 and trap, but themselves penetrated to the remotest depths of forest and moun- 

 taut in search of the precious pelt. The quest for seal was no less ardent upon 

 Ac water than was that for otter, mink, and beaver on the land. 



* In certain portions of the tropics a tough and slender vine is used for 

 binding together the timbers in fence and building construction. The cipo 

 (pronounced see-po) is a vine of this kind, and is suggestively called the 

 Brazilian nail. 



