V. i 



ANIMALS INTRODUCED FOR THE 

 SAKE OF UTILITY 



THE utilities to which man has paid regard in acclimatizing 

 new animals cover a wide range, but they may be said 

 broadly to depend either on the value of the animal in itself, 

 that is to say on the products it yields when alive or after its 

 death, or on the work it can do, whether that be the artificial 

 but efficient labour resulting from years of man's guidance 

 and training, or the instinctive habit of the creature, which 

 in following its own law of life benefits also the race of man. 

 Chief amongst the useful animals in these groups must 

 rank the races of domestic stock, for human existence as it 

 is would be impossible without the flesh of flocks and herds 

 and the warm wool of sheep and goats, and intolerable 

 without the services of the ox, the horse and the dog. The 

 introduction to Scotland of the more interesting domestic 

 animals has been sufficiently touched upon in the chapter 

 dealing with their domestication. It is enough to add that 

 the acclimatization of domestic stock is a human operation 

 of wide significance. Scarcely a country is known, but man 

 has planted there his ox and his ass, his swine and his sheep, 

 always to the checking and restriction of the native fauna, 

 and sometimes even to the extermination of its weaker 

 elements. Indeed, in several of the island faunas, such as 

 that of New Zealand or of the Canary Islands, the introduced 

 domestic stock far outnumbers in variety, and in absolute 

 numbers entirely swamps the native mammalian species of 

 the land. With the advance of knowledge as to the stamina 

 of different breeds and crosses, the work of acclimatizing 

 old animals to new localities progresses with more lively 

 assurance than ever. The climatic conditions of Alaska have 

 proved so trying to the introduced old-fashioned domestic 

 stock that a new breed of dattle a cross between the 



