THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 35 



It certainly has long been thought that our domesticated 

 creatures, beasts as well as birds, must necessarily be descended 

 from some wild stock, which still exists in an untamed state. 

 This petitio principii, this begging of the point at issue, has 

 unquestionably led to wrong conclusions, and left a host of 

 naturalists, particularly oeconomical writers, planted in the 

 midst of difficulties which are still unexplained. Where is 

 the wild origin of the sheep, or of the goat, to be found ? 

 Some say here, some say there, some fix on this species, some 

 on that, and the reader ends by "giving it up." But take 

 the simple theory that many of our domestic animals are the 

 survivors of extinct races, survivors, because domesticable, of 

 extirpated, because defenceless creatures, and the difficulties 

 vanish, and become reconcileable with what we see around us. 

 All those species which have of late become, or are likely soon 

 to become extinct, disappear because they refuse to be subju- 

 gated by man; for example, the yet untamed Aurochs of 

 Lithuania, which still survives only by virtue of strict pro- 

 tective laws enforced by the Emperor of Russia, and which 

 has had all the time, from the epoch of living Mammoths to 

 the present day, to become softened in disposition, but still 

 refuses to hear the voice of the charmer. In some few sad 

 instances, principally of birds, the work of extermination ap- 

 pears to have been completed before any fair experiment had 

 been tried, as with the Dodo and the Kivi Kivi. Other spe- 

 cies, on the contrary, as the Turkey, will probably long sur- 

 vive the utter disappearance of their wild progenitors, solely 

 on account of having submitted with a good grace to the 

 dominion of Man. One of these, the Cereopsis, seems likely 

 to owe its rescue to the happy exertions of the Zoological 

 Society, which thus becomes an ark of refuge amidst the flood 

 of population. 



The Common Cock, the Gallus Gallinaceus and Aa.sx*p of 

 the ancients would, at first sight, appear to have received one 



