22 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 
Many good and useful species, however, have been lost, and 
many far less valuable have lingered. 
Just now we are beginning to realize the possible value of a 
species that has come upon the earth, made its way, and main- 
tained its place among competitors, if perchance it possesses 
qualities that are now, or that by attention may be, developed 
into characters useful to man. The muskmelon is an example 
of a species most unpromising in nature, and therefore neg- 
lected almost until our own day, yet yielding readily to im- 
provement and producing most delicious fruit. The tomato is 
another example, and asparagus another. 
Recognizing these facts as never before, the Department of 
Agriculture at Washington is scouring the world in search 
of plants of possible economic value, or those that are likely to 
yield to the ameliorating influences of the breeder and the cul- 
tivator. Even if not now valuable, those that are likely to be- 
come so are well worth the most careful consideration. In this 
way domestication of plants is at last becoming a systematic, not 
to say a scientific, business. 
This search for the possibly useful is coming to be nearly as 
systematic and far-reaching as the scouring of the earth, by 
such firms as Parke, Davis & Company, of Detroit, for plants 
with new and possibly valuable medicinal qualities. 
Domestication a gradual process. Southeastern Asia was un- 
doubtedly the first area of domestication, with Egypt a close 
second. Europe came later, and America last of all. Each made 
its contribution to the stock of domesticated animals and plants 
by adding what was lacking, by making use of some specially 
valuable native, or by utilizing the wild stock of the region when 
the cultivated races failed to acclimate, as was the case with 
European grapes in the eastern United States. 
In a general way the history of these civilizations is the story 
of their domestications as well, and a critical reading of that 
history with this particular subject in mind affords many side 
lights on the people, as, for example, the terror of the Indians 
