CHAPTER XIII 

 THE TAMING OF YOUNG ANIMALS 



PRIMITIVE man was a hunter almost before he had the intelligence 

 to use weapons, and from the earliest times he must have learned 

 something about the habits of the wild animals he pursued for food 

 or for pleasure, or from which he had to escape. It was probably 

 as a hunter that he first came to adopt young animals which he 

 found in the woods or the plains, and made the surprising discovery 

 that these were willing to remain under his protection and were 

 pleasing and useful. He passed gradually from being a hunter 

 to becoming a keeper of flocks and herds. From these early days 

 to the present time, the human race has taken an interest in the 

 lower animals, and yet extremely few have been really domesticated. 

 The living world would seem to offer an almost unlimited range of 

 creatures which might be turned to our profit, and as domesticated 

 animals minister to our comfort or convenience. And yet it seems 

 as if there were some obstacle rooted in the nature of animals or 

 in the powers of man, for the date of the adoption by man of the 

 few domesticated species lies in remote, prehistoric antiquity. The 

 surface of the earth has been explored, the physiology of breeding 

 and feeding has been studied, our knowledge of the animal kingdom 

 has been vastly increased, and yet there is hardly a beast bred in 

 the farmyard to-day with which the men who made stone weapons 

 were not acquainted and which they had not tamed. Most of the 

 domestic animals of Europe, America and Asia came originally 

 from Central Asia, and have spread thence in charge of their masters, 

 the primitive hunters who captured them. 



No monkeys have been domesticated. Of the carnivores only 

 the cat and the dog are truly domesticated. Of the ungulates 

 there are horses and asses, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and reindeer. 

 Among rodents there are rabbits and guinea-pigs, and possibly 

 some of the fancy breeds of rats and mice should be included. 

 Among birds there are pigeons, fowls, peacocks and guinea- 

 fowl, and aquatic birds such as swans, geese and ducks, whilst the, 



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