DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS 22 
and thus it was that agriculture had its beginnings in the fre- 
quent failure of the hunt. 
As game grew more and more scarce the favorite fruits were 
held in higher esteem, the places where the large-seeded grasses 
grew were carefully protected, the other vegetation was cleared 
away, and the beginnings of cultivation were made. The next 
step was to gather stores of fruits, nuts, and seeds for the 
winter, and, last of all, to plant and care for the very best in 
some open space or bend of the river where fresh new soil 
awaited occupation. Thus did cultivation begin, and thus were 
women the first farmers. 
Nothing was more natural than that the best should be 
gathered for eating, and the very choicest only reserved for 
planting. In this way the first steps in plant improvement were 
introduced at the very beginning of cultivation, and thus did 
our ancestors early learn the fundamental lesson of all breeding, 
namely, the better the parentage the better the offspring. 
This utilization of plants as well as animals added vastly to 
the food supply and greatly insured its constancy and regularity. 
Savages who followed this course prospered and encroached 
upon their neighbors, while those who depended solely upon 
the hunt suffered periodic famine and faced, in the end, extinc- 
tion,! for in a state of nature the ‘“‘law of the wild” obtains 
among men as well as among the animals. 
However, man was unwilling to give up his animal food with 
the growing scarcity of game. He had been in the habit of 
slaughtering the best,? without regard to the future, —an utterly 
wasteful proceeding, for in this way the hunt was not only fear- 
fully destructive of numbers but of quality as well, and it is little 
1 Read the history of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, who raised crops, in con- 
trast with that of the Canadian Indians who subsisted entirely by the hunt and 
were often forced in winter to eat the skins and even the bark of their wigwams. 
2 Tt is always the largest buck that is singled out for the chase. The best of 
everything is hunted, just as the woodsman, cutting a tree, even for exercise, 
chooses always the straightest and best, while the forester, who is the product 
of civilization, cuts always the worst, giving the best a still better chance. 
