PRODUCED BY MAN. 823 



'Ssanang Setzen now goes on to tell a story which crystallises for us a very curious 

 phase of old Mongol manners. Altan Khakan had a son called Pubet Paidshi. The 

 young man died, and his mother determined to kill loo boys and loo foals of camels, 

 which were to be burled with him, and to accompany him as an escort to the other 

 world. She had killed over forty boys when a tumult arose among the people.' 



Here I think I may leave this part of my subject, the signi- 

 ficance of this series of facts being sufficiently self-evident. For 

 as against these seven domesticated mammals which Central Asia 

 may with so much probability claim as being her gifts to mankind, 

 inasmuch as she either herself furnished their parent-stocks, or at 

 any rate furnished the necessary opportunities for gaining the 

 knowledge subsequently used in domesticating similar stocks else- 

 where, what can all the rest of the habitable globe set either as 

 regards cosmopolitanism or as regards importance ? As regards 

 importance the other thirteen are all but insignificant; as regards 

 cosmopolitanism, universal importation, that is, either for purposes 

 of practical utility or ' animi voluptatisque caussa/ as Caesar put 

 it, we can mention but the African cat and the African ass. 



I come now to the consideration of the facts and views with 

 which botanists have supplied us as to the original homes of our 

 cultivated plants. Our own inspection and recollection of the 

 landscapes of the various countries in which we have travelled will 

 enable us to estimate the greatness of the change, which man's 

 migrations and transportations have effected in the sphere of all 

 his labour under the sun. And I will begin what I have to 

 say under this head by the apparent paradox that the argument 

 which our cultivated plants furnish us with for determining the 

 locality whence man issued to occupy the world and subdue it, and 

 alter its external appearance, would, like some other arguments, 

 have appealed with greater force to one of the civilised races of 

 antiquity than it does at first sight to us. It is, herein also like 

 some other arguments, cogent for all that. Let us state it. Fifty 

 per cent, of our cultivated plants have been shown by De Candolle, 

 ' Geographic Botanique,' pp. 986, 987, and by :^lisee Reclus, ' The 

 Ocean' (English Trans, ii. chap. 37, 292), following him, to belong 

 to ' Europe ' and ' Asie septentrionale et occidentale,' that is to say, 

 to the Palaeartic Region of Zoogeography. So far the figures are 

 equal for cultivated plants and for domestic animals, and I do not 

 feel it necessary to dwell upon the differences which the other 

 proportional numbers show as regards Africa proper and South 



