THE PROBLElM OF DOMESTICATION 243 



require a long and costly effort to reduce them to anything 

 like domestication. Moreover, being strong, free swimmers, 

 it would not be easy to maintain them in captivity. Still, 

 selecting such a well-inundated place as Bear Island of the 

 North Atlantic, it would be most interesting to make the 

 experiment, first of accustoming them to some human con- 

 trol, and then to a selection which might serve to lift the 

 quality of the kind. It would be less difficult and perhaps 

 more advisable at first to make a trial of a similar 

 sort with the black bear, which in less arctic conditions 

 flourishes and carries a fine pelt. The only difficulty would 

 be in finding a sufficient supply of food for such captives, for 

 although they will eat fish they have no skill in capturing 

 them such as is possessed by their more degraded, or perhaps 

 we should say their less advanced kindred, the polar bears. 

 Still, as the form is even more omnivorous than man, it might 

 be practicable to feed them. 



By far the most important of the carnivora in an economic 

 sense are the seals which dwell in the high northern waters. 

 These creatures afford the most interesting subjects for 

 experiments in domestication from an economic point of 

 view that remain to be made. Of all the predatory animals 

 the seals seem to have the largest share of intelligence and 

 the greatest amount of sympathetic motives. No other wild 

 animals, except perhaps the monkeys, appear to be so human- 

 like in their qualities of mind as these creatures of the sea. So 

 far, except when they have been captured and kept for purposes 

 of show in menageries, man's relations to the seals have been 

 purely destructive; he has incessantly hunted them. Yet 

 certain species of them remain singularly willing, we may say 

 desirous, of claiming friendship with their persecutors. As 



