9 2 DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



But all these are of one country now and of one 

 religion. They know no home nor desire any, 

 except the farmhouse, in which they were born and 

 bred, and the lord of it is their lord, to whom they 

 look for food and protection. And what would he 

 do without them ? What should we do without 

 them ? It is impossible to conceive that life could 

 be carried on if we were deprived of these obedient 

 and uncomplaining servants. High civilisation has 

 been attained without steam engines ; education, 

 as we use the term now, is superfluous — Runjeet 

 Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, could neither read 

 nor write ; the human race has prospered and multi- 

 plied without the knowledge of iron ; but we know 

 of no time when man did without domestic animals. 



It is vain to speculate how the thing first came 

 about, whether the sportive anthropoid ape took 

 to riding on a wild goat before he emerged as a man 

 keeping flocks, or whether some great pioneer, 

 destined to be worshipped in after ages as a demigod, 

 showed his fellows how the wild calves, if taken 

 young, might be trained into tractable slaves; 

 and it is hopeless to expect that any record will now 

 leap to light which will give us knowledge in place 

 of speculation. But it might not be unprofitable 

 to seek for some clue to the strange selection which 

 the domesticating genius of man has made from 

 among the multifarious material presented to it by 

 the animal kingdom. If we do so we shall almost 

 be forced to the conclusion that domesticability is 



