838 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



furnishing Cheviot sheep are so abundantly forthcoming as to enter 

 even into the landscape. It were a still greater and more serious 

 mistake if any one were to compare, for succulence or sapidity, the 

 flesh-food as yet procurable in the tropics with that which we have 

 furnished us in every well-ordered house, and even hostel, in the 

 United Kingdom of the chilly and rainy isles. 



The subject is not altogether romantic, as I have already 

 acknowledged ; there is the more reason therefore for putting its 

 practical side prominently forward, and thereby, as we may hope, 

 doing something, however humble, for the bettering of man's 

 estate. That it is not altogether visionary to hope for some im- 

 provement in this direction, or to strive to make acquisitions in the 

 way of domestication under a tropical of the same kind as those 

 which our forefathers made under a Central Asiatic sun, the follow- 

 ing utterance of the late Dr. J. E. Gray, of the British Museum, 

 an authority untainted with enthusiasm, may be taken as showing. 

 Speaking at the 1864 (Bath) Meeting of the British Association 

 (see Report of Address, p. 83, in Transactions of Sections) of our 

 at present available domestic animals, Dr. Gray said : — 



* An attentive study of the list, and of the peculiarities of the animals coniposiT)g it, 

 induces me to believe that, in attempting to introduce new domestic animals into 

 some of our colonies, it would be desirable not to confine ourselves to the European 

 breeds, but to ascertain whether some of the domestic races of Asia or Africa might 

 not be better adapted to the climate and other conditions of the colony, although for 

 reasons, to which I have before adverted, it would neither be worth the trouble, nor 

 consistent with good policy, to attempt their introduction here. 



* Tliere is evidently ample room for such experiments, which might be advantageously 

 made, for instance, in the colonies of the coast of Africa, where our horse, ass, oxen, 

 sheep, and goats, and even dogs, have greatly degenerated, where the horse and the 

 ass live only for a brief period, where the flesh of the ox and sheep is described as bad 

 and rare, and the flesh of the goat, which is more common, is said to be tasteless and 

 stringy. The pig alone, of all our domestic animals, seems to bear the change with 

 equanimity : and the produce of the * milch pig ' is often sold to passengers of the 

 mail packets, and the ships on the stations, as the milk of the cow, or even the goat, 

 is rarely to be obtained. Unfortunately both the white and the black inhabitants are 

 merely sojourners in the land, and do not seem to possess sufficient energy or in- 

 clination to make the experiment themselves.' 



There is a more serious aspect or rather prospect of our future 

 relation to the animal world. In this realm of activity, as in some 

 others, we have of late been very rapidly extending our responsi- 

 bilities. A man needs not to have spent years in the Malay 

 Archipelago as Mr. Wallace has done, nor in the very different 



