16 HARDY ON PKOVINCIAL ACCLIMATIZATION. 



fish of its forests and waters. Variety of food lias always been a 

 desideratum on sanitary principles, but sufficient variety appears to 

 have been attained in the ^veil-known animals of the modern farm 

 yard.* 



On the other hand, when we turn to the vegetable world, we 

 find that the efforts to domesticate wild species, either for food or 

 ornament, have been continuous and ever-increasing. Forest trees 

 and shrubs, plants with esculent roots, leaves or seeds, those pos- 

 sessing fibres capable of utilisation by manufacture, countless hosts 

 of ornamental and flowering plants, have swelled the lists of modern 

 botanical acelimatizers ; and where the all-important condition of 

 suitable climate did not exist, the necessary temperature for the 

 plant's existence was obtained artificially. In accounting for this 

 it wall be easily seen how great a difference lies between the cultiva- 

 tion of a new plant and a new animal, thus giving so great a pre- 

 ponderance to the acclimatizers of new species of the vegetable 

 kingdom, w^hen it is remembered that the former demands but two 

 conditions for life and health — the soil and climate of the centre of 

 creation m which it was first placed, or of the natural boundaries 

 to which it has in course of time spontaneously radiated ; whilst 

 the new animal does not succeed in any great dissimilarity of these 

 two conditions, and imperatively demands association for the pur- 

 poses of subsistence, with the same or most similar forms of vege- 

 table life to those of the country where it is found as indigenous. 

 The same argument applies to the transfer of fish to foreign waters, 

 either salt or fi-esh ; and here still greater research is to be incul- 

 cated before experimental acclimatization, as then* peculiarities oi 

 habits and diet are so much less understood. 



The recent discovery of the art of artificial hatching of the ova 

 of fish, termed Pisciculture, the increasing frequency and popularity 

 of zoological collections, and the successful experiments made in the 



*'Well authenticated modern cases of the transmission of large mammals from 

 one country to another occur in the following instances: "The Reindeer was 

 successfully introduced into Iceland about a century ago, while similar attempts 

 failed, about the* same time, in Scotland. The Cashmere or TJiibet goat was 

 brought to France a generation since, and succeeds well. The same or an allied 

 species, andtlie Asiatic buffalo, were carried to South Carolina about the year 1850, 

 and the former at least is tliought likely to prove of permanent value in the United 

 States. The Yak, or Tartar ox, seems to thrive in France, and success has attend- 

 ed the recent efforts to introduce the S. American Alpaca in Europe." — Man and 

 Nature ; by G. P. Marsh. 



