THE ANIMAL VIEW OF MAN. 257 



tain. Savage man, who has generally been first in contact with 

 animals, is usually a hunter, and therefore an object of dislike to 

 the other hunting animals, and of dread to the hunted. But civil- 

 ized man, with his supply of bread and beef, is not necessarily a 

 hunter ; and it is just conceivable that he might be content to 

 leave the animals in a newly discovered country unmolested, and 

 condescend, when not better employed, to watch their attitude 

 toward himself. The impossible island in The Swiss Family 

 Robinson, in which half the animals of two hemispheres were col- 

 lected, would be an ideal place for such an experiment. But, un- 

 fortunately, uninhabited islands seldom contain more than a few 

 species, and those generally birds, or sea-beasts; and in newly 

 discovered game regions, savage man has generally been before 

 us with his arrows, spears, and pitfalls. Some instances of the 

 first contact of animals with man have, however, been preserved 

 in the accounts of the early voyages collected by Hakluyt and 

 others, though the hungry navigators were generally more intent 

 on victualing their ships with the unsuspecting beasts and birds, 

 or on noting those which would be useful commodities for " traf- 

 ficked' than in cultivating friendly relations with the animal in- 

 habitants of the newly discovered islands. Thus, we read that 

 near Newfoundland there are " islands of birds, of a sandy-red, 

 but with the multitudes of birds upon them they look white. 

 The birds sit there as thick as stones lie in a paved street. The 

 greatest of the islands is about a mile in compass. The second is 

 a little less. The third is a very little one, like a small rock. At 

 the second of these islands there lay on the shore in the sunshine 

 about thirty or forty sea-oxen or morses, which, when our boat 

 came near them, presently made into the sea, and swam after the 

 boat." Curiosity, not fear or hostility, was, then, the emotion 

 roused in the sea-oxen by the first sight of man. The birds, 

 whales, and walruses in the Wargate Sea and near Jan Mayen's 

 Land were no less tame, and the sea-lions in the Southern Pacific, 

 the birds that Barents first disturbed in Novaya Zembla, and even 

 the antelopes which the early explorers encountered in the least- 

 inhabited parts of central South Africa, seem all to have regarded 

 the newly discovered creature, man, with interest and without 

 fear. Sir Samuel Baker, in his Wild Beasts and their Ways, re- 

 marks on the " curious and inexplicable fact that certain animals 

 and birds exhibit a peculiar shyness of human beings, although 

 they are only exposed to the same conditions as others which are 

 more bold." He instances the wildness of the curlew and the 

 golden plover, and contrasts it with the tameness of swallows and 

 wagtails. The reason does not seem far to seek. The first are 

 constantly sought for food, the latter are left undisturbed. Per- 

 haps the best instance of such a contrast is that of the hawfinch 



VOL. XLI. 20 



