DOGS AND SAVAGES. 653 



sels, lizards, etc. Where necessity requires it, there is, as is too often 

 forgotten, nothing strange about this. The nature of man is such that 

 he must either prey on the animal world or perish from want, hunger, 

 and cold. As soon as he learned to use, for defense or attack, other 

 weapons than his own limbs, he must have begun to bring the dog 

 nearer to him as his helper in the struggle. From the earliest stage 

 when the dog was used merely as food, the custom of eating him in one 

 way or another has survived among a great number of peoples; and 

 the number of dog-eating races of which I published a list in 1881 could 

 now be easily increased to 200, although there would then be included 

 such tribes as have been compelled to adopt the custom from hunger 

 or because of hostile neighbors. When Fr. Ratzel l remarks : " One 

 may assert in general that man, in the lowest grade of civilization, 

 always first gratifies his pleasures, and only takes up useful things 

 when necessity drives him to it; thus we see the dog as his only con- 

 stant companion at a time when his use was very limited," he is 

 speaking of a certain stage of civilization like that, for instance, of the 

 Chambians, who domesticate divers animals for amusement. 2 Specially 

 gifted men may early have attempted the exhibition of animals, as we 

 read, not to mention early European sources, in Maury's f report on the 

 Tchoude in southern Russia and Siberia. Waitz (VI, 786) mentions a 

 dance in which adults introduce dogs iu order to teach boys to acquire 

 control over them, and this may perhaps be considered a survival from 

 that distant time when men strove by means of cunning (traps) or 

 arms, to capture these animals. 



It is a noticeable fact that may be explained to some extent on phylo- 

 genetic grounds that the primitive dwarf peoples had but one domestic 

 animal, the dog. The Batua, from Lubi to Taganyika, have, with the 

 exception of a few fowls, no domestic animals but the dog, and, indeed, 

 one of the remaining breeds of African dogs is a quite serviceable, 

 well-marked, greyhound-like species, very much used for hunting. 4 

 The Bushman has no other animals than the dog and the louse, and 

 only the first is possessed by the dwarf-like Veddahs of Ceylon, and the 

 Negritos of the Philippine Islands. The high relative standing given 

 to the dog by all these peoples is explained at once by their occupation 

 of hunting, which early caused them to consider the most suitable 

 animal for the chase, which therefore limited their domestication of 

 animals to the dog, who thereafter had no rival with whom to share 

 his master's care and attention. The most significant fact shown by 

 this continued limitation is that stocks of a certain culture stage 

 remain stationary at this point. As the dog is the oldest domesticated 



'Volkerkunde, I, 57. 



2 Verhl. d. Ges. f. Erdk., Berlin, XVI, 456; also v. Martius, Beitr. zur Ethno- 

 graphie, I, 17. 

 3 Archiv f. Anthrop. Ill, 365. 

 ■•Zeitsckr. d. Ges. f. Erdk. Berlin, XXVIII, 113, et seq. 



