10(5 MR STARK ON THE SUPPOSED PROGRESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY 



should at once grant the principle as a chief means of their domestication. But 

 all gregarious animals, as M. CUVIER remarks, are not found capable of domesti- 

 cation. The greater number of the untamed Ruminants herd together in flocks ; 

 the zebra, the wolf, the hysena, the beaver, are found in companies, and are yet 

 untamed by man. And even the tribes of quadrumanous animals, or apes, most 

 nearly resembling the human form, though with hands at their extremities capa- 

 ble of performing all the actions of human beings, are yet the untamed denizens 

 of the forest. Domestication is not, therefore, the necessary or sole result of the 

 social instinct of gregarious animals, even carried to a high degree, else all grega- 

 rious animals would be equally capable of this domestication. And though it be 

 true, as a general rule, that no solitary species, however easy it may be to tame 

 the individuals, has ever afforded domesticated races, yet the common cat forms 

 an instance of an exception to this rule. A particular disposition in the animals 

 themselves an instinctive propensity to attach themselves to the human race, is 

 therefore necessary, as M. F CUVIER has stated, to their complete domestication. 

 This tendency in certain animals to become the associates of man, has been 

 noticed by other observers. " It has been proved," says BUFFON of the goat, 

 " that these animals are naturally the friends of man, and that, in inhabited places, 

 they do not become wild."* " Compare the docility and submission of the dog, 

 with the distrust and ferocity of the tiger ; the one appears the friend of man, and 

 the other his enemy."f The wild cattle of the island of Tinian, met with by Lord 

 ANSON in his voyage, } were not at all timid, and they had no difficulty in getting 

 near them. The wild horses of the Llanos, according to HUMBOLDT, are easily re- 

 duced to servitude, and then- good qualities developed. The goats met with at 

 the island of Bonavista by an early voyager, followed the negroes with a kind of 

 obstinacy ; and, according to Dr RICHARDSON, there is no difficulty in approaching 

 the Rocky Mountain sheep, which, in the retired parts of the mountains, exhibit 

 the simplicity of character so remarkable in the domestic species. || 



A late writer on the " Influence of Domesticity upon Animals,"^[ M. DUREAU 

 DE LA MALLE, after asserting that the origin and country of our domestic animals 

 had been sought for in vain, states, in apparent opposition to this, that all the 

 tamed animals existed in a wild state in Europe in the time of ARISTOTLE ; and 

 that, in four hundred and fifty years from ARISTOTLE to PLINY, the domestication 

 of animals had but slowly extended. It is conceded at once, that the domesti- 

 cated species of animals might be found in a half wild state wherever human set- 

 tlements had introduced them, at the period alluded to, as at present : and the 



* BUFFON, Hist. Nat. xxiii. 99. t Ibid. p. 67. 



| ANSON'S Voyage round the World, 4to, p. 309. Lond. 1776. 



Personal Narrative, iv. 340. In Paraguay, they are put in harness when caught, and a day is 

 sufficient to tame them. (ROBERTSON'S Letters on Paraguay, ii. 6.) 

 || Fauna Boreali-Americanse, p. 279. 

 ^f De 1'Influence de la Domesticite sur les Am'maux, Ann. des Sciences Nat. xxi. 52. 



