THE DOMESTICATION OF WILD ANIMALS 
Some time ago the Société d’Acclimatation de France 
published in its Bulletin an address delivered by Dr. E. 
Trouessart at the Conference held on January 12th, 1900, 
to discuss the question of the animals most suitable for 
acclimatisation and domestication. The author commences 
his address by stating that the present age is one of 
machinery and electricity ; and that eventually the use of 
these will result in the total consumption of all the stored 
vegetable fuels, such as coal and petroleum, buried in the 
crust of the earth. When such a time comes, he argues, 
man will be compelled to rely once more exclusively on 
the labour of animals, which derive their nutriment and 
their ‘power from the consumption of the living vegetable 
products of the earth. It is, therefore, urged that it is 
important to domesticate and acclimatise as many kinds of 
wild animals as possible before they are finally extermi- 
nated. And to support his argument for domesticating 
animals other than those now commonly held in subjection, 
Dr. Trouessart points out that while a certain area of 
country is only capable of nourishing a definite limited 
number of one kind of animal, such as oxen, it is perfectly 
able to sustain in addition some of another description, 
such as sheep, which are able to pasture on ground over 
which cattle have already gone and eaten all they could 
obtain. Pigs, again, have a totally different class of nutri- 
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