THE RELATION OF INSTITUTIONS TO ENVIRONMENT. 707 



and are benefited by the coininensality to the extent that they sponta- 

 neously strive for this form of union. The yucca is fertilized by the 

 yucca moth so regularly and persistently that it has grown impotent, 

 while the moth nests in the plant for which it lives and would hardly 

 survive divorce therefrom beyond a single generation 5 this is the 

 cooperation of miscigenesis, 1 toward which many desert organisms have 

 been driven in the strife for existence. 2 Thus the cooperation begin- 

 ning in simple tolerance sometimes ends in bodily union — a union so 

 complete that the component organisms are transformed unto each 

 other and transfigured into an exalted unity far transcending individual 

 or specific quality. 



There are certain stages in cooperation defined by the organic (espe- 

 cially neural) rank of the cooperating organisms. When the shrub and 

 mouse and insect unite in a community, the most highly organized 

 member is the most independent and measurably dominates its associ- 

 ates; yet the unconscious domination is feeble and the communality is 

 not greatly affected thereby — this may be called the stage of protocul- 

 ture. When the farmer ant affiliates with the silver grass, or the honey 

 wasp of Sonora with its nectar-bearing bush, the articulate domi- 

 nates and molds to its unconscious will the nerveless and moveless 

 plant; and though both organisms are benefited the higher profits the 

 more, and is ennobled by conquest along the line leading to intellectual 

 dominion — this may be called the stage of eoculture. When the nomadic 

 ancestor of the Papago Indian long ago entered the solidarity of the 

 desert, he dominated the herbivore and carnivore by craft as well as 

 strength, and learned to scatter seed and fertilize soil by design rather 

 than chance and to protect fruit-bearing xnants, howsoever sown, unto 

 the harvest; and since he strove against sun and sand with the plant and 

 the lower animal, he was forced into the solidarity which he only digni- 

 fied but dared not destroy, and entered, albeit feebly and haltingly, into 

 conscious control of vitality — this is the stage of simple agriculture. 

 As the prehistoric Papago became sedentary and began to divert and 

 store water, small birds sought his domicile for protection, fowls 

 gathered to glean his fields, and coyotes and vultures collected to scav- 

 enger his homestead; then, since the dove and turkey furnished eggs 

 and flesh and the coyote sounded a laruni at the approach of enemies, 

 tolerance warmed to interdependence and the lower organisms passed 

 collectively (for such is the way of natural taming) into domestication 

 and later into artificialization for the behoof of mankind, yet to their 

 own benefit — this is the stage of zooculture, or the higher agriculture. 

 Thus the growth of cooperation begins with independent association 



Miscigenesis (see Winohell, "Preadamites," 1880, p. 80) was combined with com- 

 mensality in an earlier discussion of the life of the desert ("The Beginning of Agri- 

 culture," American Anthropologist, Vol. VIII, 1895, p. 366), but discrimination is 

 desirable. 



2 Loc. cit., also "Expedition to Seriland," Science, New Series, Vol. Ill, 1896, 

 page 493. 



