PRODUCED BY MAN. 839 



surroundings of Siberia as Middendorff has done, nor, Sir, in those 

 of South Africa, to be convinced that the numbers of domesticated 

 animals, I do not say of species of domesticated animals, will 

 assuredly, and at no such very distant period, gain a relative mag- 

 nitude of which our forefathers, who so patiently won them for us 

 from savagery, could have had no conception. And that earlier 

 than the attainment of this relative preponderance, the domestic 

 animals on this world's surface will be nearly the only large land 

 animals left upon it, and that the wild ones will be but pigmy 

 vermin, 'winzige Ungeziefer' in Middendorff 's words, or, at least, 

 less noble animals, is equally evident. For example, we can see as 

 regards the lion, the king of beasts, that the breach-loading rifle is 

 now rapidly completing what the smooth-bore, with flint and steel, 

 began ; for whereas he loses his life by his boldness in coming out 

 into the open, we have in one part of the Old World the tiger, and 

 in another the hyaena, substituted for him, a change in neither case 

 much or at all for the better. 



I have no reason for doubting that in these days we all consciously 

 strive to act up to what has been spoken of, though not wholly cor- 

 rectly, as 'the new commandment of the nineteenth century,' 

 * Thou shalt not be cruel ; ' and I sincerely trust, that as regards all 

 animals, domestic and wild, whether in the fields or in the streets 

 and shambles, whether in the woods or within walls, this command- 

 ment may, like some others, attain greater extension in practice, 

 as its many-sided applicability becomes more and more manifest. 

 But I think that, even without our intending it, the extension of 

 domestication has increased the sum total of lower animal happiness. 

 A South African traveller. Sir, whose authority you will not repu- 

 diate, and we shall not even question, has told us (Galton, 

 'Domestication of Animals,' Trans. Ethnog. Soc. iii. N. S. 1865, p. 

 l%2\ from his own observation of the still very really wild life of 

 those regions, that it is not after all such unmixed happiness as 

 persons might think, who have never crouched by night by the 

 side of pools in that thirsty land, and watched how nightly drink- 

 ing, even of water, may lead to much misery. 'The life of all 

 beasts,' says that writer, 'in their wild state, is an exceedingly 

 anxious one. From my own recollection, I believe that every 

 antelope in South Africa has to run for its life every one or two 

 days upon an average, and that he starts or gallops under the 



