20 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



adjustments of our actions and our institutions to fit these evolving 

 needs, can we think ourselves to be even on the road toward its 

 solution. 



A. Savage Beginnings 



i. THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 1 

 BY NICHOLAS JOLY 



When we consider the immense difficulties which primitive man 

 must have encountered in the task of subduing an animal so powerful 

 as the wild bull, so swift as the horse, so fierce as the dog in its natural 

 state, we may well wonder how he could tame these wild creatures 

 and render them useful allies and devoted servants. Now that the 

 work is accomplished, nothing seems to us more simple than domesti- 

 cation, but there is nothing voluntary on the part of the animal in 

 this association between the beast and man, his master. The lamb 

 did not become of its own accord a submissive victim, nor did the 

 bull voluntarily submit its neck to the yoke, nor the horse open its 

 mouth to receive the bit. But man has discovered and turned to 

 account in most of the animals he has subjected to his rule an 

 instinct of sociability, existing together with the love of independ- 

 ence, and predisposing them to domestication. Here once more his 

 intelligence created him king; it enabled him to discern among the 

 beasts of the forest those which would be most useful to him by 

 furnishing him with flesh, milk, muscular strength, soft warm fur 

 all the resources of their instinctive and sagacious faculties. In this 

 respect the work of our early ancestors is so complete that the lapse 

 of many centuries has added but little to the riches acquired by 

 them. 



What species of wild animal was first chosen for domestication 

 and at what epoch it was first tamed is a question which, though 

 often discussed, has as yet received no satisfactory answer. Paleon- 

 tology, however, has lately added another argument in favor of the 

 opinion of those who hold that the dog was the first animal subjected 

 to the dominion of man. Professor Steenstrup has proved that the 

 dog hunted with man and shared his repasts at the remote epoch of 

 the Danish kitchen middens. The eminently sociable disposition of 

 the dog, the innumerable varieties which the species present, and its 

 valuable qualities, natural or acquired, all tend to prove that it was 



1 Adapted from Man before Metals, pp. 256-59. (D. Appleton & Co.) 



