PREHISTOKIC FAUNA. 333 



Negative evidence is perhaps stronger in this case than in most of the 

 others in which I have had to refer to it. For it is difficult to think on 



misconceived of; and it is true that we do find this comparison used by ^Eschylus 

 ('Agamemnon/ 1 671) for a man with a character not wholly unlike that of Paris. 

 This however proves nothing. I have not enquired what the balance of commen- 

 tatorial authority may be upon this point ; for I cannot understand how any unpre- 

 judiced person who will compare the passage already referred to, II. vi. 504-514, with 

 the ten lines II. xxii. 22-32, describing the armed Achilles, can doubt that the 

 two passages are the work of one poet; that he uses in them two metaphors in illus- 

 tration of one phenomenon ; and that in neither of these metaphors is the bird in 

 question alluded to. Theognis (fl. 540 B.C.) is the earliest Western writer, so far as 

 I know, in whom any indisputable allusion to this bird has been found; and to him 

 the cock crowing appears to have become already a familiar mark of the passing of 

 time. We have also Payne Knight's authority ('Prolegomena,' ed. 1820, Paris and 

 Strasburg, p. 3) for saying that in the same sixth century B.C. the coins of Himera 

 and Samothrace bore evidence of its establishment in Mediterranean countries. See 

 for coins, Goltz and Nonnius, ' Graecia, Insulae et Asia Minor ; * Carystus, tab. xi. et 

 xii ; Massieu, p. 500 ; Rasche, ' Lex Num.' ii. 2. p. 311. 



Whilst upon the subject of the importation of animals from the East Indies, I would 

 draw attention to the fact that the area of the world's surface which M. Mortillet (in 

 his most suggestive paper, 'Sur l'Originede Bronze,' in the 'Revue d' Anthropologic,' 

 1875, iv. p. 653) has pointed out as the region in which the largest and most readily 

 available deposits of tin were and are to be found side by side with copper, the region 

 namely which extends from ' La Birmanie Anglaise ' to the Sunda Straits, lies entirely 

 within the area of distribution of the Gallus barikiva (see Sclater, 'Proc. Zool. Soc.,' 

 April 21, 1863, p. 122), the undoubted parent stock of the common fowl. This coin- 

 cidence appears to me to add something to the force of M. Mortillet's argument in 

 favour of the East Indian origin of bronze ; but it must be added, on the other side, 

 that if the domesticated bird followed bronze westwards, this order of events was 

 reversed in the easterly and south-easterly direction, the introduction of the bird 

 having preceded all importation of metal into Polynesia. 



So much has of late been written upon the Indian or African origin of our domestic 

 animals, mammalian and avian, that it may be well to add in this connection that too 

 much weight may in this question be given to the principle laid down by Link in his 

 usually excellent though now old treatise, 'Die Urwelt,' 182 1, i. p. 201, to the effect 

 that the domestication of birds indicates a higher condition of civilisation than the 

 domestication of mammals. The Indians described by Mr. Bates (1. c. supra) domes- 

 ticate not only the common fowl which will, but curassows which will not breed in 

 captivity; and the same authority is referred to by Mr. Francis Galton ('Trans. Ethn. 

 Soc.,' 1865, New Series, vol. iii. p. 125) as having given him a list of birds tamed by 

 the same tribes which is more extensive than the list of quadrupeds tamed by them, 

 though that list contains twenty-one species. And this they do,. at the same time 

 that they ' do not show themselves so sensible of the advantages derivable from the 

 ox, sheep, and hog, all of which have been introduced into their country.' Few 

 Englishmen will be found to agree in Guizot's comparison ('Hist. Civ. Franc.,' lect. 

 vii. torn, i, cit. Merivale, 'Conversion of the Northern Nations,' p. 185) of their 

 Anglo-Saxon forefathers' condition, social and political, to that of the modern Red 

 Indians ; still as against Link's principle quoted above it is worth while to recollect 

 that they, in the words of Mr. Thrupp (I.e. p. 172), 'kept as pets and probably 

 attempted to domesticate' ravens, rooks, cranes, and peacocks. 



