INTRODUCTION 9 



few human actions possess. If we, can impress this view, it 

 will be certain to awaken men to a larger sense of their 

 responsibility for, and their duty by, the creatures which we 

 have taken from their olden natural state into the social 

 order. It will, at the same time, enlarge our conceptions of 

 our own place in the order of this world. 



In the following pages little effort has been made to pre- 

 sent those facts concerning domesticated animals which would 

 commonly be reckoned as scientific. The several essays 

 which, in larger part, were separately printed in Scribner's 

 Magazine, are intended for those persons who, while they 

 may not care to approach the matter in the manner of the 

 professional inquirer, are glad to have the results which 

 naturalists have attained, so far as they may serve to extend 

 knowledge of things which lie in the field of familiar experi- 

 ences. To the text as it at first appeared, numerous additions 

 have been made, and the concluding chapters, on the Rights 

 of Animals, and on the Problem of Domestication, are new. 

 In them an effort is made to direct attention to the import- 

 ance of the problem of man's relation to the lower life which 

 is about him, and which in the future far more than in the 

 past is to be helped or hindered by his rule. Our life is 

 made up of large problems ; but there seem few that are 

 greater than this, which concerns our duty by the creatures 

 that share with us the blessings of existence, and over which 

 we have come to rule. 



