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expeditions resulting sometimes in the killing of the 
urus or wild boar and sometimes themselves. Both of 
these animals, prototypes of our cattle and swine, were 
domesticated by some discerning savage whose more 
certain possession of adequate subsistence: insured the 
elevation of his descendants in the scale of being. 
With the proper exercise of patience and skill, and the 
assured acquirement of due knowledge, we will cease to 
need to wander in remote and storm-tossed seas for fish 
we can secure in safety and abundance at our doors. 
The possibilities of fish culture are boundless, and their 
expression may awaken the same measure of incredulity 
as was occasioned twenty-five years ago by the 
preliminary efforts of the Fish Commissioners to stock 
the Connecticut river with shad. Yet a few seasons 
later the resulting abundance was so extraordinary that 
the erstwhile scornful fishermen begged the Commission- 
ers to desist, urging that it was useless to hatch fish 
beyond the absorbtive capacity of the markets. 
Refrigerating appliances and improved facilities of 
transport, however, widened the market, and more 
effective appliances of capture soon enabled the 
rapacious fishermen to change the surplus into a 
lamentable deficiency. 
A full recognition of the plasticity of all organisms, of 
the readiness with which their form, structure and 
habits adapt themselves to external influences, and are 
thus altered for the better or the worse, is one of the 
great developments of ourcentury. A dim appreciation 
of the truth has been discerned and acted upon from 
time immemorial, but until the last generation no 
adequate conception of its possibilities dawned upon 
the minds of men. What the intelligent breeder has 
done we all know. With cattle it has been said that an 
ideal form chalked upon a wall, by patient effort and 
skill, by an acutely discriminating selection and avoid- 
ance of all but imperceptible divergencies, has resulted 
