hy the Study of' Domestic Animals. 195 



is as just as it is old. Moreover, it is beyond dispute that the 

 influence of domestication is nothing more than the influence, 

 sometimes direct, sometimes indirect, of the power of man, sub- 

 jecting to his sway those species which contribute to his nourish- 

 ment, his industry, and his pleasures, and in this manner creat- 

 ing for them conditions which are very different, indeed, from 

 those of their wild and primitive state. 



Considered in this point of view, the domestic animals them- 

 selves, therefore, may truly be reckoned among the handiworks 

 of man ; they exhibit in all those modifications which separate 

 them from their primitive types so many unexceptionable traces 

 of the influence and power of our race in ages that are past ; 

 and are, in a word, if I may so express myself, monuments of 

 a particular kind, but at the same time as durable as any of 

 those which more commonly go under the name. Is it not m 

 truth man who has made the dog what he is, and not less the 

 horse, the sheep, and many other animals under our eye ; that 

 is to say, who, subjecting them to his yoke in a very remote 

 epoch, whose date is almost invariably lost in the obscurity of 

 time, has successively modified these useful animals, has develop- 

 ed in them new faculties and instincts, new at least when com- 

 pared with their primitive condition, has moreover imprinted on 

 them those forms and characters which they at present bear, 

 and, finally, from the one spot on the face of the earth where 

 nature had fixed their habitat, has transported them, and spread 

 them over the known regions of the civihzed world* 



Thus, as it regards organization, instinct, habits and country, 

 man has modified all in the domestic varieties, every where bend- 

 ing and subjecting the primitive type to the law of his wants, 

 his wishes and inclination ; an immense work this, both in itself 

 and its results, at once the first proof and the first foundation of 

 this almost illimicable power and industry. 



From these important relations of causation betwixt man\- 

 power universally exercised according to time, place, and cir- 

 cumstance, and the different modificationsof the domestic animals; 

 — from these alliances betwixt two classes of actions and phenome- 

 na, which at first view might be regarded altogether foreign to 

 each other, there manifestly results the possibility of elucidating 

 the study of the one by that of the other ; and hence this second 



N 2 



