WILD ANIMALS IN CAPTIVITY 
attention, they have attained a perfectly wild state, yet 
nevertheless exhibit the stamp of domestic variation and 
a tendency to return, under proper treatment, to their 
former condition. We need only point to the horses of 
South America, to the sheep and cattle in Australia, and 
to the pigs and cats in New Zealand, in support of what 
we advance. 
China must be regarded as the country the people of 
which have succeeded in obtaining and breeding domestic 
animals as an article of food far in advance of any other 
nation. They have the most prolific sheep that produce 
four and, sometimes, five at a birth, geese that lay and 
hatch all the year round, and pigs that produce four or 
five-and-twenty at a time, most of which, under the watch- 
ful care of these thrifty and careful people, are reared. 
We may naturally infer that those animals most subject 
to variation and most capable of conforming to changed 
conditions, were those selected for domestication, and that 
as a probable result the wild ones, belonging to the species 
that were taken under the protection of man, became 
amalgamated with the semi-domesticated individuals, 
until they ceased to exist as wild animals ; hence the 
present difficulty of fixing or determining upon the wild 
origin of nearly all our domestic animals. Among deer, 
the reindeer is the only species that has shown a capability 
of being domesticated, and in a wild state it exhibits a 
wonderful amount of variation, not only in size, but in 
colour and habits, therefore clearly indicating the success 
that has been attributed to the Laplander, but which is, 
in all probability, far more ancient than this race of people 
— ’Witness the very numerous remains of this animal’s 
bones, associated with the traces of man, found in the 
ancient caverns of Mid Europe. There is every reason to 
believe that the reindeer will be preserved in a domestic 
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