The Earth as Modified by Human ActionMarsh, George P. (George Perkins)
History
The Earth as Modified by Human Action
Marsh, George P. (George Perkins)
Conservation of natural resources; Human geography; Nature -- Effect of human beings on; Physical geography
Indeed, the faculty of spontaneous reproduction and perpetuation
necessarily supposes a greater power of accommodation, within a certain
range, than we find in most domesticated plants, for it would rarely
happen that the seed of a wild plant would fall into ground as nearly
similar, in composition and condition, to that where its parent grew, as
the soils of different fields artificially prepared for growing a
particular vegetable are to each other. Accordingly, though every wild
species affects a habitat of a particular character, it is found that,
if accidentally or designedly sown elsewhere, it will grow under
conditions extremely unlike those of its birthplace. Cooper says: "We
cannot say positively that any plant is uncultivable ANYWHERE until it
has been tried;" and this seems to be even more true of wild than of
domesticated vegetation.
The wild plant is much hardier than the domesticated vegetable, and the
same law prevails in animated brute and even human life. The beasts of
the chase are more capable of endurance and privation and more tenacious
of life, than the domesticated animals which most nearly resemble them.
The savage fights on, after he has received half a dozen mortal wounds,
the least of which would have instantly paralyzed the strength of his
civilized enemy, and, like the wild boar, he has been known to press
forward along the shaft of the spear which was trans-piercing his
vitals, and to deal a deathblow on the soldier who wielded it.
True, domesticated plants can be gradually acclimatized to bear a degree
of heat or of cold, which, in their wild state, they would not have
supported; the trained English racer out-strips the swiftest horse of
the pampas or prairies, perhaps even the less systematically educated
courser of the Arab; the strength of the European, as tested by the
dynamometer, is greater than that of the New Zealander. But all these
are instances of excessive development of particular capacities and
faculties at the expense of general vital power. Expose untamed and
domesticated forms of life, together, to an entire set of physical
conditions equally alien to the former habits of both, so that every
power of resistance and accommodation shall be called into action, and
the wild plant or animal will live, while the domesticated will perish.
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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