CHAPTER XV 



THE UTILIZATION BY DOMESTICATION OF OUR LARGER 

 NATIVE RUMINATING MAMMALS 



All the domesticated animals now in the service of man 

 have been derived originally from wild animals which were 

 native to the countries in which their domestication was 

 first undertaken. Horses, cattle, and dogs have been so 

 long associated with man's development that their origin 

 is, in the majority of cases, shrouded by centuries of time, 

 and is largely a matter of conjecture. The history of the 

 horse is lost in antiquity; Egyptian monuments show us 

 that the humped cattle were domesticated at least as early 

 as the twelfth dynasty, that is, 2100 B. C. In China the 

 domestication of the pig is believed to date back at least 

 4,900 years from the present time. And the dog was domes- 

 ticated in Europe long before the period of any historical 

 record. 



As the cradle of the human race was probably in the sub- 

 equatorial regions of the Eastern Hemisphere, the wild 

 animals inhabiting more northerly regions would receive the 

 attention of man at a later date, and it is not unlikely that 

 one of the last animals to be domesticated was the caribou 

 or reindeer. The reindeer of northern Europe and Asia 

 have long been domesticated, but no attempts appear to 

 have been made by the northern natives of the American 

 continent to use this animal, and it was not until 1892 that 

 domestic reindeer were introduced into North America. 

 An account of the history of the reindeer on this continent 

 will be given later in this chapter. 



Proposed Domestication of the Musk-ox. — There is still 

 another native land mammal of large size which has char- 



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