lo Conservation Reader 



there sharpened the wits of these people. It led to one dis- 

 covery after another. New needs were felt and new ways 

 of satisfying them were sought. They kept finding out 

 more about Nature and how she works. After many years 

 they knew much more and were also far more comfortable 

 than those people who continued to live where Nature sup- 

 plied everything. 



There are now so many more people on the earth than 

 there were long ago that to furnish them all with food is a 

 very great task. Besides, there are now many people en- 

 gaged in work other than farming, hunting, and fishing. All 

 such people have to be provided for by those whose business 

 it is to get food. People of the great cities are dependent 

 upon those in the country for all that they eat ! We can 

 picture to ourselves the suffering that would follow if for 

 only one week every one had to get his own food. 



We need many things that the first people thought noth- 

 ing about, because their maimer of life was so inuch simpler 

 than ours. Let us see now what they are. 



We Hve in tightly closed houses, and so have less trouble 

 in keeping warm and dry. But we do not always get the 

 supply of fresh air that we need. Many of us are sickly 

 and weak because of this. Our ancestors lived in the 

 open air, which is always pure and fresh. A supply of 

 pure air, then, is one of the things that we must now pro- 

 vide for. 



People once gave no thought to the purity of the water 

 that they drank. When there were few people, water did 

 not easily become impure. One could drink water wherever 

 one found it and there was small risk of harm. Now in 

 many places there are so many thousands of people 



