CONDITIONS OF ANIMAL DOMESTICATION 225 



not in its attitude towards man. For a complete and 

 subtle analysis and estimate of the likenesses and 

 differences of temperament in domestic animals, we 

 must turn to those chapters of Buffon in which, after 

 satisfying his imagination by the poetic description 

 of the sensations of man awakening to find himself 

 equipped with every faculty in a world in which he 

 was destined to be supreme, he reviews the different 

 species of domestic animals, and accounts for the 

 uses severally found for them, not so much by 

 difference of structure as by constant variations of 

 temperament which have modified their treatment 

 by man, and permanently affected their development. 

 While all domestication presupposes an equable, and 

 in some degree sympathetic, temperament in the 

 species when wild, such slight differences of disposition 

 as the restlessness and vivacity of the goats, as con- 

 trasted with the more staid and tranquil character 

 of the sheep, have relegated the first to wild and 

 uninclosed regions of mountain, and to the care of 

 races who are poor and comparatively unenterprising, 

 and so retarded over the greater part of the globe 

 the development of the goat ; while its relation, the 

 sheep, whose wool is at best not so valuable as that 

 of the Angora and Kashmir goats, has been improved, 

 refined, and developed, until it marks the most 

 successful example of domestication in temperate 



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