Concerning Animals and Other Matters

ut the sacred writer has not informed us how he first caught them and tamed them. If we consult other records of the infancy of the human race, they reveal as little. When the E

o had used them in their chariots lon

ut none of their bones. They were not so careful of the bones of horses, which lie in thousands about the precincts of their untidy villa

of the steam engine? Can any of these be put in the scale, as benefactors of our race, with the man who first trained a horse to carry him on its back, or drew milk with his hand

tive forests he used to give them a wide berth, for his flint arrows fell harmless off their tough hides, and they were fierce exceedingly. A cock is crowing on the fence as if the whole farm belonged to himself: he ought to be skulking in an Indian jungle. The sheep have no business here; their place is on t

do without them? What should we do without them? It is impossible to conceive that life could be carried on if we were deprived of these obedient and uncomplaining servants. High civilisation has been attained without steam engines; education,

wild calves, if taken young, might be trained into tractable slaves; and it is hopeless to expect that any record will now leap to light which will give us knowledge in place of speculation. But it might not be unprofitable to seek for some clue to the strange selection which

ated. The ring dove of Asia has been kept as a cage bird for so long that a permanent albino and also a fawn-coloured variety have been established and are more common in aviaries than birds of the natural colour; but the ring dove has not become a domestic fowl, and never will. In this instance there is a plausible explanation, for the blue rock, unlike

ratory one, the mallard, has been persuaded to abandon its wandering ways and settle down to a life of ease and obesity as a dependant of man. In India there is a duck of the same genus as the mallard, known as the spotted-billed duck (Anas poecilorhynchus), which is as large as t

our food and protection and lay their eggs for our use and rear their young for us to kill are descended from Gallus bankivus, the jungle fowl of Eastern India. How they came here history records not: perhaps the gipsies brought them. They appear now in strange and diverse guise, the ponderous and f

oss to understand. And if the artificial conditions of their life were removed, they would soon all lapse alike to the image of the stock from which they are sprung. This is well illustrated in a show case in the South Kensington Museum exhibiting a group of fowls from Pitcairn's Is

heops. In India I have known a black buck which regularly attended the station cricket ground, moving among the nervous players with its nose in the air and insolence in its gait, fully aware that eighteen-inch horns with very sharp points insured respectful treatment. Mr. Sterndale traine

falo and yak have probably come under the yoke in comparatively recent times, for they are little changed; but the goat and still more the sheep have undergone a wonderful transformation within and without. Who could recogni

nders wild, the common domestic goat is a very different animal from that of Europe, and has peculiar spiral horns of the same pattern as the markhor, another grand species of wild goat which draws eager hunters to the h

cattle lapsed into savagery. So have the camel, and, with a similar possible exception, the horse. Was the whole race in each of these cases subjugated, or exterminated, and that by uncivilised man with his primitive weapons? There is no analogy here with the extinction of such animals as the mammoth, for the ox is a beast in every way fitte

he jackal, but possibly a blend of more than one species. But a dog is now a dog and neither a wolf nor a jackal. A mastif

ake a very intractable costermonger's moke. We may infer from this that the first subjugation of each of our common domestic animals was the achievement of some genius, or of some tribe favourably situated, and that they spread from that centre by sale or barter, rather than that they were separately domesticated in many places. This would partly explain why a few species of widely different families are so univer

many other animals fitted to enrich and adorn human life which would make no insuperable resistance to domestication if wisely and patiently handled. Here is a noble opening for carrying out in its kindest sen