CHAPTEK IX 



DOMESTIC MAMMALS 



COMPARISONS BETWEEN WILD AND TAME ANIMALS ACCLIMATISATION 



FERAL ANIMALS 



WILD AND TAME ANIMALS 



One of the great delights of country life is the opportunity which 

 it gives of studying animals which for generations have been 

 domesticated by man. Of these the dog, we must believe, was 

 the earliest to be tamed, since in the evolution of the human race 

 there can be no doubt that men were hunters before they became 

 herdsmen and shepherds. As to the epochs at which our domestic 

 animals were successively brought under man's dominion little 

 definite is known, and speculation will not afford much help. 

 Leaving such matters as these to the antiquarian, the nature 

 student will concern himself rather with noting the differences 

 between the structure or habits of tame animals and those of their 

 wild relatives, as well as with the many signs which still exist, even 

 in the most domesticated breeds, of their wild ancestry. Again the 

 occasional " throwbacks " and reversions to an ancestral type and 

 the rapidity with which " feral " animals resume the characteristics 

 of the wild species from which they spring, are subjects worthy of 

 investigation. Furthermore, he will try to acquire some conception 

 of the steps and methods through which the great structural differ- 



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