224 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLAY 



not ' society/ as we understand the word, but in 

 company with one another rather than in anti-social 

 seclusion, only do so because they participate in that 

 general stock of animal good-temper which is the 

 rule, not the exception, in the animal world. If the 

 aim of domestication were to make one solitary 

 species the companion of man, the consideration of 

 temperament might be neglected. The North 

 American Indians, for example, only tamed a single 

 species, the dog, which, judging from the analogy 

 of the wolf-like dogs of the Hare Indians, was 

 probably derived from the domestication of the fox 

 or wolf. Even had its disposition not been modified 

 by time and training, there was no reason to suppose 

 that the wolf-like dog, though as hostile in tempera- 

 ment to all other animals as the dingo of Australia, 

 might not have remained a solitary but successful 

 instance of domestication by a race who themselves 

 were at war with every other form of living animal. 

 But among all progressive races the domestication 

 of animals means not the maintenance of a single 

 species in semi-commensalism with man, like that of 

 the Red Indian and his dog, but the enforced associa- 

 tion of many species in daily intercourse. It is a 

 condition of the successful existence of any species in 

 domestication that it shall be equable in temperament 

 towards other species, and benevolent rather than 



