These Breeding And Plucking Processes Are Similarly Improving As
Regards The Secondary Uses Aimed At; And, Although The One Requires
But A Few Minutes For Its Accomplishment, The Other Many Years Or
Centuries, They Are Essentially Alike.
We eat wild oysters alive with
great directness, waiting for no cultivation, and leaving scarce a
second of distance
Between the shell and the lip; but we take wild
sheep home and subject them to the many extended processes of
husbandry, and finish by boiling them in a pot - a process which
completes all sheep improvements as far as man is concerned. It will
be seen, therefore, that wild wool and tame wool - wild sheep and tame
sheep - are terms not properly comparable, nor are they in any correct
sense to be considered as bearing any antagonism toward each other;
they are different things. Planned and accomplished for wholly
different purposes.
Illustrative examples bearing upon this interesting subject may be
multiplied indefinitely, for they abound everywhere in the plant and
animal kingdoms wherever culture has reached. Recurring for a moment
to apples. The beauty and completeness of a wild apple tree living
its own life in the woods is heartily acknowledged by all those who
have been so happy as to form its acquaintance. The fine wild
piquancy of its fruit is unrivaled, but in the great question of
quantity as human food wild apples are found wanting. Man, therefore,
takes the tree from the woods, manures and prunes and grafts, plans
and guesses, adds a little of this and that, selects and rejects,
until apples of every conceivable size and softness are produced, like
nut galls in response to the irritating punctures of insects.
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