812 MODIFICA.TIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



extentj as measured by latitude and longitude as well as by other 

 gauges, to which the world has been modified by his migrations 

 and importations. 



Let us now enumerate the twenty domesticated mammals which 

 we possess, and which for practical purposes may be taken as 

 making up a tale of about twenty or twenty-one ; let me specify 

 which amongst them belong, as regards their origin, to the Palae- 

 arctic region, and to the restricted portion of it already dwelt upon 

 and defined, as the maps show you ; and thirdly, leaving consider- 

 ations of locality and of number^ let me contrast the value of nine, 

 ten, or eleven mammals which man domesticated in that district 

 with that of the others acquired from ^ or contributed by all the 

 other regions of the globe taken together. 



Our twenty-one chief domesticated mammals may be enumerated 

 in something like order of merit and necessity to us as follows : the 

 dog, the cow, the sheep, the pig, the horse, the cat, the goat, the ass, 

 the camel, the dromedary, the bufialo, the alpaca, the vicugna, the 

 reindeer, the zebu, the banteng, the yak, the ferret, the rabbit, the 

 mongoose, and the guinea-pig, omitting some few species the im- 

 portance of which as being locally limited to very small areas, and 

 as consisting of individuals numerically few, is too small to make 

 it necessary to notice them. Representatives of more than one- 

 half of this list can be fairly claimed by the Palaearctic centre of 

 creation as owing their parentage to stocks native to its soil; this 

 half consisting of the dog, the cow, the sheep, the pig, the horse, 

 the goat, the camel, the dromedary, the reindeer, the ferret, and the 

 rabbit. I have said ' representatives ' of one-half of this list because 

 it is more than probable that some of our breeds of domestic dogs 

 and of pigs may have been reclaimed from wild parent-stocks in 

 other regions of the world. There can, however, be no reasonable 

 doubt that the great majority of the domestic breeds known till 

 comparatively recent times in Europe, of each of these two animals, 

 the dog and the pig, were drawn from parent-stocks living in 



^ It is a curious point in mythology that, so far as my memory serves me, no god 

 nor demigod should have the credit assigned him of having domesticated any animal 

 except the horse. Of course this fact, if fact it be, shows two things with more or 

 less probability; firstly, namely, that these acquisitions were made in very far-off 

 times, not merely in ' the ages before morality,' but in those much earlier ones, 'the 

 ages before history ; ' and secondly, that the acquisition of the horse was made in later 

 days than the domestication of the other animals in question. 



