PART IV. OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



THE FARM ANIMALS' FAMILY TREE. 



Science has some wonderful stories to tell of our farm animals 

 and their relationships. Men who have studied these things say 

 that the pigs, the oxen, and the sheep are all distant relatives. 

 Other members of the same family are hippopotami, camels, deer, 

 giraffes, and goats. All these animals belong to the family of " ar- 

 tiodactyla." The family gets its name from the Greek language, 

 in which the word means " even-toed." That is, they all have an even 

 number of toes, which is the feature in which the scientists find the 

 family resemblance, just as a boy's friends find a family resemblance 

 in his eyes, or his hair, or his nose. 



As for the horse, he must be lonely, indeed, because he has no rela- 

 tives about the farm at all. In fact, the family that the horse be- 

 longs to is rather dying out, for the only animals he can claim any 

 kinship to nowadays are the tapirs and the rhinoceri. The horse's 

 last name is " perissodactylon," or odd-toed. He started as a little 

 beast, no bigger than a fox, with five toes on each front foot and 

 three toes on each rear foot. Gradually the toes grew one into the 

 other till the horse has just one on each foot, which we call his 

 " hoof." 



Of all the many thousand kinds of animals known to science, only 

 about GO can be truly domestic; and by this is meant animals which 

 can be tamed and bred in captivity, and will live under civilized con- 

 ditions. While scientists say that the domestic animals of the present 

 are not as intelligent as the wild creatures which were their ancestoi-s, 

 they also add that man would never have become civilized had it not 

 been for such beasts as the horse, the ox, and the sheep. As an ex- 

 ample, the Indians of the plains in the country are mentioned. 

 Originally they were a feeble race, hunting game as best they were 

 able, on foot and with dogs. Then the white man brought the horse 

 into the country, and as soon as the Indian likewise gained mastery 

 of that animal he became a dangerous antagonist to the settler. More 

 than this, he was able to live better, as well as fight better, with the 

 aid of the horse. 



We call the age in which we live the age of the machine, the era of 

 steel; but even so, in this, the most advanced country in the world, 



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