95 
Lost in the gloom of a vast antiquity, there must once 
have been a benighted savage who from the wild sea 
grasses about him chose that of the most promise. Its 
cultivation maintained with interrupted and oft-flagging 
effort, and prolonged through innumerable generations, 
resulted in the perfection of our first cereal, the barley 
of the present day. That pioneer agriculturist opened 
an immense field to the labors of his posterity, but only 
inferior thereto is that we may mark out for the 
generations that we hope are to follow in our footsteps. 
Unlike the land, the ocean has no absolute deserts, nor 
bears it a mere surface film of life, but in all its varying 
depths and in every portion of its vast waters it teems 
with animated creatures. Even where man has bereft 
it of its choicest treasure, its nursery remains, ready 
like the rich grasses of a far rolling prairie, to foster 
renewed swarms into being. 
Agriculture is the development of an immeasurable 
antiquity, but with a larger intelligence, sustained with 
greater constancy of effort operating through a far less 
period, we may make pisciculture its handmaid, the twin 
dependence of that perfected generation to whom in 
vastly increased number we may hope is to descend the 
heritage of a gladder and afairerearth. Generation by 
generation our social structure assumes greater harmony 
and efficiency of action, for within it there is a constantly 
increasing diffusion of the comforts, the luxuries and the 
knowledge of life, each and all tending to an ultimate 
equalization and balance of its various parts. This 
development of society, the most remarkable feature of 
our age, is the result of the greater division of its labor 
occasioned by the increased capacity of its food 
producers. No complex social structure, no great 
diversity of industry or amassing of wealth is possible 
in a community the time and energy of whose members 
is mainly absorbed in the mere production of food. In 
all civilized countries there has been within the last 
