INTRODUCTION. 7 



facts regarding them are of sufficient interest if we 

 consider them one by one, and they become much 

 more interesting when we attempt to show the close 

 way in which they are bound together. Volumes 

 would not suffice to exhaust the subject ; but if the 

 entire task is too considerable, I may at least hope to 

 accomplish a part of it by treating of those facts 

 which may be brought together under the common 

 title of Animal Industries. Taken separately, they 

 may be reproached with a certain anecdotal character, 

 but we cannot fail to agree that taken altogether they 

 constitute an important chapter in the sciences of 

 life. 



The 'chief industries of Man. — Let us first throw 

 a rapid glance at the various stages which the 

 civilisation and industry of Man have gone through 

 before arriving at their present condition. To make 

 clear these phases we might either follow the state 

 of civilisation in any given country by tracing back 

 the course of centuries, or else at a given epoch 

 find out in different parts of the earth all the 

 stages of human evolution. The savage men of to- 

 day are not further advanced in their evolution than 

 our own ancestors who have now gone to fossil. How- 

 ever it may be, Man, at first frugivorous, as his 

 dentition shows as well as his zoological affinities, in 

 consequence of a famine of fruit or from whatever 

 other cause, gradually began to nourish himself with 

 the flesh of other animals. To search for this fleeing 

 prey developed in him the art of hunting and fishing. 

 His intelligence, still feeble, was entirely concentrated 

 on this one point : to seize on an animal and to feed 

 on it, although neither his nails nor his teeth nor his 

 muscles make it natural to him. To hunt, to fish, 



