ORIGIN AND TRANSFER OF DOMESTIC QUADRUPEDS. 85 



Origin and Transfer of Domestic Quadrupeds. 



Civilization is so intimately associated witli certain inferior 

 forms of animal Kfe, if not dependent on them, that cultivated 

 man has never failed to accompany himself, in all his migrations, 

 with some of these humbler 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 can not all be specifi- 

 cally 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 respect- 

 ing 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 ; f that he was unknown to the Carthaginians until 



* 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- 

 PEiDrus, Hist. Aug. Scnptores, ed. Casaubon, 1690, 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. 



f The horse and the ass were equally unknown to ancient Egypt, and do not 



