1870. | The Origin of the Domestic Animals. 751 
The sheep is a transformation of the mouflon of Corsica, of 
Sardinia, of Cyprus, which joins in the east, by Asia Minor, the 
argali sheep (mouflon) of Grand Tartary. 
Finally, the ordinary pig is evidently a modified wild boar. 
Indeed, our pig set at liberty assumes the characters of the wild 
boar, and the latter, raised like our pigs, end by resembling them. 
Like the horse, or the ox, the wild boar ranges from Europe to 
Asia. Moreover, it is only in Asia that we find wild another 
swine, which is allied to the turf pig. 
The only country containing all the ancestral types of domestic 
animals introduced into Western Europe at the Robenhausian 
epoch is that part of Asia which extends between the Mediterra- 
nean, the Grecian archipelago, the Black sea, Caucasus, the Cas- 
pian sea, the limits of Afghanistan, the north of Persia and 
Assyria. We should conclude that it is from that region that has 
proceeded the great wave of migration which has brought us, 
with the civilization of the polished stone epoch, our first domes- 
tic animals. 
The study of cultivated plants confirms the facts deduced from 
the study of the animals. The invaders of the west of Europe, 
which at the Robenhausian epoch brought us the domestic 
animals, also introduced to us the three cereals, wheat, barley and 
rye. It is an agriculture transferred, transplanted all at once, and 
which consequently has not taken birth in our regions. The 
three cereals which I have just cited have had no ancestors 
among us. Among all the wild grasses, which have been well 
studied and are perfectly known, none approach the wheat, barley 
or rye. We are ignorant, it is true, of the ancestral forms of 
these three cereals, nevertheless, botanists are quite generally 
agreed that they came from the Caucasian regions. A certain 
fact, which militates in favor of this opinion, is, that the cereals 
named, whenever they have been cultivated in our fields, some- 
times leave sporadic or spont isd lants ; but they soon dis- 
appear at the end of two or three years and are no more to be seen. 
In the Caucasus, on the contrary, these sporadic and spontaneous 
individuals, escaped from cultivation, perpetuate themselves for a 
series of several years, besides that, they are generally more 
frequent. This proves that there they are nearer the place of 
origin, if that be not the place of origin itself. 
With the wheat, barley and rye the Robenhausian invaders — 
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