Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/699

Rh procure only an extremely limited subsistence, because plants adapted to the wants of man were rare and scattered. Like the animals whose kind of life lie continued, he first limited his demands to asking life and shelter from plants. A commensal of all the phytophagous species, he took his place as a parasite, not as a master, at the banquet of creation served without distinction to the multitude of the hungry. If he managed to subsist, it was with great difficulty, constantly a prey to hunger and in a perpetual uncertainty as to the future even in the midst of a temporary abundance, which was dissipated in his hands without his being able to make permanent provision.

To the phase of absolute uncultivation that occupied the first age of the human race succeeded a period of trials which was prolonged through the ages of savage hunting and pastoral barbarity. On rising from the state of Nature, men in quest of food would give more attention and care to the exploitation of the resources of the hunt, always available, than to that of vegetable production, which was limited to a short season. Wherever, as in North America, game was abundant over vast territories, the preying system could maintain itself independently. Where, on the other hand, game was rare and the extent of the territory small, as in Polynesia, the populations had early recourse to agricultural operations. Peoples who from being hunters became shepherds, obliged to wander from pasture to pasture with their flocks, were hardly able to devote themselves to agricultural experiments, which demanded sedentary customs. But when hunters, for lack of game, and shepherds, after droughts and epizoötics, became deprived of their customary resources, they were forced to call upon plants to supplement their subsistence. The getting of wild food was manifestly insufficient for populations which had multiplied in a relative abundance, and people were obliged, under pressure of necessity, to apply their ingenuity to the artificial propagation of useful plants to fill the measure of their wants. In fact, the more earnestly these plants were sought, the rarer they became. A certain number of species of great merit have thus disappeared from wild Nature, and are preserved only in cultivated varieties. The advantage of saving and increasing so precious types was understood at an early period, and man, exercising an intelligence of which no other animal had shown itself capable, learned to take good care of the plants which had proved most valuable to him. Doubtless fortunate accidents showed the way and were a revelation. Some seeds of fruits thrown down carelessly and springing up around the house suggested the thought of intentional plantings. The savage, who saw these young plants spring up and grow, watched over them, tried other experiments of reproduction and plantation—and the garden was formed, the