THE PROBLEM OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 21 



one of the earliest companions of man, whom it has never since 

 abandoned, whom it has everywhere followed. 

 Townsend has said: 



The dog is the greatest conquest man ever made, if M. Buff on will 

 allow me to say so. The dog is the first element in human progress. With- 

 out the dog man would have been condemned to vegetate eternally hi the 

 swaddling clothes of savagery. It was the dog that effected the passage 

 of human society from the savage to the patriarchal state, in making pos- 

 sible the guardianship of the flock. Without the dog there could be no 

 flocks and herds; without the flock there is no assured livelihood, no leg 

 of mutton, no roast beef, no wool, no blanket, no time to spare; and, 

 consequently, no astronomical observations, no science, no industry. 



There is a great deal of truth in this ingenious trifling. Once sub- 

 jected to the all-powerful influence of man, aided by the dog, and 

 transported by him into all climates, our animals, slaves at first, and 

 at last domestic, have undergone in the successive ages a series of 

 modifications in outward form, size, and the proportions of their 

 limbs, in their fur and skin, in their interior organs and their functions, 

 in their instincts and intelligence. The history of these wonderful 

 and almost infinite varieties has been treated by a master hand in 

 Darwin's important work, Animals and Plants under Domestication. 

 This book shows how far the power of man over animated nature can 

 extend; it treats of the infinite varieties of breeds of dogs', horses, 

 oxen, sheep, pigs, fowls, pigeons, etc., which man has created, and 

 still creates, for use or to gratify his caprice. Compare the New- 

 foundland dog with the King Charles spaniel; the Arab horse, so 

 swift in its course, with the heavy but powerful dray horse; the bison 

 of America, with its monstrous head, with our Breton or Alderney 

 cow; the ancona sheep of Massachusetts with the Leicester or merino 

 breed, and say whether man is not also a creator. The list would be 

 endless if we came to consider the instincts acquired or lost, the 

 fecundity increased or diminished, the diet completely changed, the 

 acclimatization and naturalization of exotic species, etc. 



The greater number of our domestic animals, commonly regarded 

 as originally natives of Central Asia, are on the contrary of European 

 origin. Their primitive stock, whether single or multiple, goes back 

 in the case of many of them to a remote geological antiquity; that is 

 to say, at least as far as the fourth epoch. Of course, this same 

 original stock may exist no longer, except in a fossil state. That of 

 the dog, of the horse, of the ox, etc., are cases in point. We are so 



