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undomesticated as there is of an undomesticable animal being 

 found domesticated. The adoption of this (its domestica- 

 tion) as a specific character, would relieve our comparative 

 anatomists and systematists from the inconsistencies and dif- 

 ficulties in which they have become involved in their attempts 

 to determine the wild stocks from which our domesticated 

 breeds have originally sprung. All inquiries on this subject 

 have hitherto proceeded on the foregone conclusion that the 

 domestic breeds must be referable to one or other of the wild 

 species. Let this view be abandoned, and let it be conceded 

 that it is at least possible that domesticable species have been 

 created for the special use of man, and let the species, then, be 

 compared with one another with as great a willingness to find 

 them distinct as there hitherto has been a determination to 

 find them the same, and I am sure that (in some of them at 

 least) as good specific characters will be found for distinction 

 as are thought sufficient in other species ; and it must be kept 

 in mind, that we are left, in considering the subject, almost 

 entirely, if not wholly, to the characters of the animals them- 

 selves ; for no instance occurs in which the actual period 

 or process of domestication of any species has taken place 

 under the eyes of man, or even has occurred within the period 

 of authentic history. Neither can we point to any undisputed 

 instance of a species having been once domesticated, and hav- 

 ing afterwards relapsed into wildness. The African elephant, 

 which we know from history was used, both in peace and war, 

 by the Carthaginians and other North African nations in the 

 time of the Romans, may be cited as an instance contradictory 

 of this ; but, in the first place, we do not know that the species 

 possessed by the Carthaginians was the same species as that 

 now found to the north of the equator in Africa, nor even that 

 the species so found now is the same as the South African spe- 

 cies. The effigies of some of the elephants represented on an- 

 cient Roman medals are no doubt figured with the large ears 

 of the present South African species ; but there may have been, 

 and may still be, more than one species with large ears ; and, 

 in the second place, it is possible that there may be some spe- 

 cies (among which the African elephant should possibly fall) 

 which are only half domesticable, — such, perhaps, as our com- 



