16 THE CAMEL. 



power of water or of wind, and asks from inor- 

 ganic nature no other gifts than those which 

 she spontaneously offers, to supply his wants 

 and multiply his enjoyments. 



But the very dawn of social life, in those 

 stages of human existence which precede all 

 true civilization, demands, as an indispensable 

 condition, not the mere usufruct of the sponta- 

 neous productions of the organic world, but the 

 complete appropriation and domestication of 

 many species of both plants and animals. Man 

 begins by subjugating, and thereby preserving, 

 those organic forms which are at once best 

 suited to satisfy his physical wants, and, like 

 himself, least fitted for a self-sustaining, inde- 

 pendent existence ; and he is to end by extend- 

 ing his conquests over the more widely dissimi- 

 lar, remote, and refractory products of creative 

 nature. We accordingly owe to our primeval, 

 untutored ancestors, the discovery, the domesti- 

 cation, the acclimatization of our cereal grains, 

 our edible roots, our improved fruits, as well as 

 the subjugation of our domestic animals ; while 

 civilized man has scarcely reclaimed a plant of 

 spontaneous growth, or added a newly tamed 

 animal to the flocks and herds of the pastoral 

 ages. Indeed, so remote is the period to which 

 these noble triumphs of intelligent humanity 

 over brute and vegetable nature belong, that we 



