ORIGIN AND TRANSFER OF DOMESTIC QUADRUPEDS. 87 
man has never failed to accompany himself, in all his migrations, 
with some of these humble attendants. The ox, the horse, the 
sheep, and even the comparatively useless dog and cat, as well as 
several species of poultry, are voluntarily transferred by every 
emigrant colony, and they soon multiply to numbers far exceed- 
ing those of the wild genera most nearly corresponding to them.* 
Of the origin of our domestic animals, we know historically 
nothing, because their domestication belongs to the ages which 
preceded written annals; but though they cannot all be specifi- 
rally identified with now extant wild animals, it is presumable 
that they have been reclaimed from an originally wild state. 
Ancient writers have preserved to us fewer data respecting the 
introduction of domestic animals into new countries than re- 
specting the transplantation of domestic vegetables. Ritter, in 
his learned essay on the camel, has shown that this animal was 
not employed by the Egyptians until a comparatively late 
period in their history; + that he was unknown to the Cartha- 
* The rat and the mouse, though not voluntarily transported, are passengers 
by every ship that sails for a foreign port, and several species of these quad- 
rupeds have, consequently, much extended their range and increased their 
numbers in modern times. From a story of Heliogabalus related by LAM- 
pripivs, Hist. Aug. Scriptores, ed. Casaubon, 1650, p. 110, it would seem that 
mice at least were not very common in ancient Rome. Among the capricious 
freaks of that emperor, it is said that he undertook to investigate the statistics 
of the arachnoid population of the capital, and that 10,000 pounds of spiders 
(or spiders’ webs—for aranea is equivocal) were readily collected; but when 
he got up a mouse-show, he thought ten thousand mice a very fair number. 
Rats are not less numerous in all great cities; and in Paris, where their skins 
are used for gloves, and their flesh, it is whispered, in some very complex and 
equivocal dishes, they are caught by legions. I have read of a manufacturer 
who contracted to buy of the rat-catchers, at a high price, all the rat-skins 
they could furnish before a certain date, and failed, within a week, for want 
of capital, when the stock of peltry had run up to 600,000. 
Civilization has not contented itself with the introduction of domestic 
animals alone. The English sportsman imports foxes from the continent, and 
Grimalkin-like turns them loose in order that he may have the pleasure of 
chasing them afterwards, 
+ The horse and the ass were equally unknown to ancient Egypt, and do not 
appear in the sculptures before the XV. and XVI. dynasties. But even then, 
the horse was only known as a draught animal, and the only representation of 
