parts of the world much as horses and wheat are farmed in other parts, and may in a sense be regarded as domesticated animals. The sponge and oyster "farms" are on the sea-floors.

Leaving out sponges and oysters and the three insects which have just been mentioned, all of the animals that man has associated with himself as domesticated animals belong to the back-boned crowd, that is, are vertebrates. And if the goldfish and turtle are omitted, only the warm-blooded birds and mammals are represented among human domestics. By far the greatest number and most important of these belong to the order of hoofed animals, or ungulates. Excepting the cat and dog, all are primarily vegetable feeders. All of the great burden-bearing races are strict vegetarians.

By far the largest number of domesticated animals are of Asiatic origin: the horse, donkey, dog, mule, water-buffalo, sheep, goat, camel, elephant, honey-bee, silk-moth, chicken, peafowl, goose, duck, swan, and gold-fish. The ox, pigeon, reindeer, and pig are from Europe. America furnished the turkey, alpaca, llama, guinea-pig, and cochineal bug; while the cat, canary, and guineahen are from Africa. The exceedingly large contribution from Asia is not due to the large size of this continent nor to the greater variety of animal life there, but to the fact that Asia was man's native continent, the continent on which the human species probably originated, the continent, at any

rate, on which mankind first arrived at the domesticating stage of development.

There are something like 100 species of animals and 1,000 species of plants today represented in human commerce.

These races of beings which man has associated with himself are living beings. They eat and drink and breathe, they suffer and enjoy, reproduce their kind and love their young, much as human beings do. They have been taken from their natural surroundings and forced to adopt ways of living that are often cruel, or even horrible. There is nothing much more certain than that men and women of the far future will recognize their kinship with these races, and will treat them in an entirely different way from what we do. As Darwin says, "Sympathy for the lower animals is one of the noblest virtues with which man is endowed."

PART II.

Wild Survivals in Domesticated Animals

1. The Struggle for Existence.

As a rule, animals are adapted to their surroundings. They have the form and architecture which they need to enable them to exist. They fit their surroundings, as if they had been whittled out by some expert to suit the various places in which they live. They have just the organs they need, arranged in just the way they should be, to carry on life successfully.

It used to be supposed that this wonderful adaptation of living beings to their surroundings was the result of the skill and benevolence of the Creator. Animals were all supposed to have existed from the beginning, just as we find them today. It is now known that the perfect adaptations of animals to their surroundings is the result of a world-wide struggle to live and a consequent survival of the fittest to survive. In the struggle for life most animals perish. Only the few survive. These few are the ones best fitted to their surroundings. The survival of the fittest which has gone on for millions of years has resulted in the production of species with natures and bodies exceedingly well fitted to the world in which they live.

More beings are born than can live on the earth. There is an over-production of life. There is not enough food and air and room to go round. It is estimated that a single pair of house-sparrows would, if none should die, produce enough sparrows to cover the state of Indiana in 20 years: The lobster lays 10,000 eggs in a season, and the oyster 2,000,000. A female white ant, when adult, does nothing but lie in a cell and lay eggs. She lays 80,000 eggs a day for several months. The natural increase of a single pair of gypsy moths would destroy all the plants of the United States in eight years. The eel produces eggs but once in a life-time, but it produces the almost incredible number of from 5 to 20 millions, depending on the size of the fish. Certain low forms of animal life reproduce so rapidly that, if they should all survive, their offspring would in a few days fill the seas. If every egg of the codfish should produce an adult, a single pair in 25 years would produce a mass of fish as large as the earth.

One result of this overproduction of animal life is a world-wide struggle for existence. The earth is a battlefield. How it may be on other spheres, we do not know. But on the particular globe on which we have been allotted to come into existence life is one mighty tragedy. Species are pushing and crowding and murdering each other in the effort to live. And this pushing and crowding and exterminating has gone on ever since the beginning of life on the earth millions of years ago.

There are about a million species of animals known to science at the present time, that is, there are about a million that are known and named. And there are probably a million more that are not yet catalogued. And it is estimated that from 20 to 100 times as many species of animals have lived and perished entirely from the earth as today survive-20 to 100 times as many species, remember, not individuals. The rock masses over which we walk every day are vast cemeteries in which lie all that is left of immeasurable billions who once lived, breathed, and had their existence as we do now. These facts give a little idea of the nature and extent of the struggle which has gone on here on the earth, and whose story lies locked forever in the fossil-bearing rocks.

2. Vestigial Organs.

or

Vestigial means "remnant," or "trace;" and vestigial organs means "remnant organs, gans which have gone out of use and which are in the act of passing away as a result.

In the struggle for life species are continually displacing each other, continually driving each other out of one set of surroundings into another set. When a species is driven out of one set of surroundings to which it is fitted into another set different from the first, it is very likely to have some organs that are left over and not needed in the new environment. On the other hand, it will probably need some organs which it does not have.