_Beginnings of Agriculture._ Here agriculture begins. By relieving plants of this intense competition by means of tillage, and by selecting the most promising for domestication, they are enabled to use all their energy for the development of those qualities which add to their intrinsic value, instead of expending it in the struggle for existence. Given, thus, free access to the soil and sunshine, with needful nourishment supplied and their fungous or parasitical enemies destroyed, the domesticated plants yield trustful obedience to the protecting hand of the husbandman. Freed altogether from the necessity of self-protection they become prolific and pour into the world's bread basket in marvelous abundance the seeds--a single one of which would suffice to answer Nature's law for the propagation of species. This surplus of yield for which each plant has need of but a single seed, and more especially this improvement of quality for which the plant has no concern, is Nature's reciprocal reward for having given her children gratuitously that protection which otherwise they would have had to provide for themselves. Nor is animal life less susceptible of improvement. Between the animal wild and the animal domesticated--that is whether Nature-bred or man-bred--the range in quality is as marked as that which separates the savage from the philosopher. Nature demands only strength, endurance; but man demands quality and excellence, and he proceeds scientifically to accomplish his purpose. By conscious design and a sort of mental architecture the animal to be is planned, and the picture thus conceived in the brain of the breeder becomes incarnated in the form, size and character of the animal. Not only is the animal created with the desired quality as to its parts and products, but its nature is transformed from fear and ferocity to that of trust and docility. For example the descendants of the wild horse are not only changed from vicious brutes to trustful beasts of burden, but are also differentiated into many different breeds to meet the demands of strength, speed or endurance. Specimens of such breeds as the Belgian, Percheron or Hambletonian exist as monuments to the breeder's art no less renowned and for more useful purpose than anything in Nature, the likeness of which the sculptor has wrought in marble or the artist has transferred from life to canvass. From the wild buffalo, presumably, the ideal strains of pedigree kine, for beef or dairy products, have been created as surely and even more scientifically than the sculptor has immortalized his ideals in granite or marble.