Cuap. V. ABSENCE OF DOMESTICABLE ANIMALS. 99 
a land otherwise so richly endowed by nature. This, however, is a 
difficult question, and involves many other considerations. The presence 
or absence of domesticable animals in a country, no doubt, has a very 
great influence on the character and culture of races. The North 
American Indians, especially those of Florida, offered many points of 
similarity in character and social condition to the Indians of the Amazons 
regions ; and they were, like them, condemned, probably from the same 
cause, to depend for existence chiefly on the produce of the chase or 
fishing. On the other hand, the Indians of Peru, whose more favoured 
home contained the Llama, were enabled to reach a high degree of 
civilisation, a great help thereto being this priceless animal, which 
served as a beast of burthen, and yielded wool for clothing, and milk, 
cheese, and flesh for nourishment. In the plains of Tropical America 
there exists no animal comparable to the ox, the horse, the sheep, or 
the hog. Of the last-mentioned, indeed, there are two wild species ; 
but they are not closely allied to the European domestic hog. Of the 
other three animals, which have been such important helps to incipient 
civilisation in Asia and Europe, the genera even are unknown in South 
America. There is no lack in the Amazonian forests of tameable 
animals fit for human food; the tapir, the paca, the cutia, and the 
curassow turkeys are often kept in houses, and become quite as tame as 
the domesticated animals of the old world ; but they are useless from 
not breeding in confinement. Curassow birds are often seen in the 
houses of Indians; one fine species, the Mitu tuberosa, becoming so 
familiar that it follows children about wherever they go: it will not 
propagate, however, in captivity. It is shown to be not wholly the 
fault of the natives in this case, by their valuing the common fowl, 
which has been imported from Europe and adopted everywhere, even 
by remote tribes on rivers rarely visited by white men. It is, however, 
treated with little attention, and increases very slowly. The Indians do 
not show themselves so sensible of the advantages derivable from the 
ox, sheep, and hog, all of which have been introduced into their 
country. They seem unable to acquire a taste for their flesh, and the 
management of the animals in a domesticated state is evidently unsuited 
to their confirmed habits. The inferiority of the native animals com- 
pared with those of the Old World in regard to capability of breeding in 
confinement, to which, according to this view, is originally owing the 
defect in the Indian character regarding the domestication of animals, 
has been brought about, probably, in some way not easily explicable, by 
the domination of the forest. It has been lately advanced by ethno- 
logists, that where dense forests clothe the surface of a country, the 
native races of man cannot make any progress in civilisation. It might 
be added that vast and monotonous naked plains produce the same 
result. The animals which have been so useful in the infancy of 
human civilisation are such as roamed originally over open or scantily 
wooded plains, probably of limited extent. The fact of many delicious 
wild fruits existing in the forest which they have never learned to 
cultivate seems to show, contrary to the view here advanced, that it is 
innate stupidity rather than want of materials that has deprived the 
Indians of these helps to civilisation. There is a kind of rice, growing 
