PAST AND FUTURE OF ANIMAL LIFE 143 



little influence and could hardly aspire to rule. With 

 the acquisition of his first rude weapons he waged 

 a petty warfare against the large carnivores which 

 threatened his safety, or against the herbivores 

 which might supply him with food and raiment, and 

 the bones of bears and tigers, of reindeer, oxen and 

 mammoths are mingled with his own in the cave 

 deposits and river drifts of the interglacial periods 

 in Europe. At what stage in his development man 

 first N thought of domesticating such animals as the 

 horse and dog, of herding cattle and sheep, and 

 finally of bringing various fruits and vegetables 

 under cultivation, we cannot exactly guess ; but these 

 first acquisitions of civilization go back to a period 

 far antecedent to history, and few savages are so 

 devoid of art as not to possess a single domestic 

 animal. The Tasmanians, both when they were dis- 

 covered at the end of the eighteenth century and at 

 their extinction as a wild race a few years later, were 

 devoid of this basis of civilization, and if they knew 

 the use of language, of fire, and of stone implements, 

 they could not boast a single domestic animal or 

 cultivated plant. Their sustenance was gained by 

 hunting unaided the wild kangaroos and opossums 

 of the bush, or by diving for shell-fish, while their 

 need for vegetable food was satisfied by a plentiful 

 and natural supply of sea-weed and young fern 

 shoots. 



