THE PREHISTORIC FARMYARD 247 



for ages transported the goods of the Far East to 

 the markets of the West. Except the buffalo and 

 gayal, none of these animals could be expected to be 

 much modified by human interference. The reindeer 

 and elephant are specialised by Nature for parti- 

 cular conditions, and as it is precisely for use in 

 those conditions that they are maintained, no one 

 would attempt to introduce differences. No one 

 would try to make a better elephant or a more 

 useful reindeer, because improvement for their par- 

 ticular life is scarcely conceivable. The snow-camel 

 has been slightly altered ; for, as he is wanted to 

 carry heavy burdens, he has been made vastly larger 

 and stronger than when wild, though the connection 

 with the original stock is plain. 



Other creatures are not so specialised, and were 

 altered probably in no great time. But first it was 

 necessary to " catch your hare." It is not difficult, 

 and is certainly interesting, to picture the early and 

 ambitious would-be pastoralist considering which of 

 the animals in his native wood, or on the mountains 

 near it, would pay best to catch, and how he was 

 to tame them. He certainly went through some such 

 process in his mind. In Europe, for instance, there 

 were at least two large wild bovine animals, one a 

 bison, the aurochs, the other a real wild bull not 

 a bison. Whoever the first cattle-tamers were, they 

 certainly decided to catch the latter, and had nothing 

 to do with the bison, for they tamed the one and left 

 the other severely alone. 



It must have needed some courage to capture 



