THE PREHISTORIC FARMYARD.
THE collection at the Zoo of all the equine animals, whether zebras or wild asses, now found on the globe, gives ample scope for conjecture as to how the horse as we know it was developed from this material. Perhaps it was not developed from them at all, but from a more horse-like animal than any of them, which has disappeared from wild life, even as the original wild ox has disappeared from the forests of the West. But a survey of all domestic forms only leaves the impression more strongly that the original tribes first drew them from the wild species with which they were in contact. It is still done by the Lapps and the jungle tribes of Assam, and the process as it goes on to-day affords scope for conjectures as to what the "prehistoric farm " must have looked like. Probably the farmyard of one of these early communities did not contain many varieties of stock, neither would the judges of an agricultural show have had many " classes " to deal with. It is the very natural tendency of early efforts at domestication in any form to be limited to the reclamation of a single species. This in itself is difficult enough. The ambition to possess a variety of domestic animals must be a much later idea. It is generally suggested from outside by travel, or the immigration of other owners with a different class of beast. The Kaffirs only took to owning horses very gradually. They were content with their cows, even as beasts of burden ; and to this day the Lapp makes no effort to add to the primeval herd of reindeer either the ponies or the cattle which his Norse neighbours have maintained, in regions as hyperborean, ever since they migrated to the far North.
The reindeer herds of the Lapps, the Samoyeds, and the East Siberian tribes continue to flourish without the slightest attempt to improve or alter the wild breed. The peculiar conditions and climate make variation or modification unlikely. Hence, though the use of the reindeer may be as old as the use of the horse, it has left the type unaltered,—an instance of primitive reclamation "preserved in ice" within the Arctic Circle. The second example is similar in kind. In Assam the wild ox or gayal is regularly "taken up " from the jungle and domesticated. The wild cows are decoyed by balls of salt, and treated with this luxury till they mingle with those which have been previously domesticated, and are gradually incorporated in the herds which are driven out into the jungle to feed, and brought home to be milked. In the case of the Indian buffalo and the Burmese elephant the tame and wild species are also seen living in the same forests, and recent travel has discovered the wild snow-camel on the cold deserts over which the tame camels have for ages transported the goods of the Far East to the markets of the West. Except the buffalo and gayal, none of these animals could be expected to be much modified by human interference. The reindeer, elephant, and snow-camel are specialised by Nature for particular conditions, and as it is precisely for use in those conditions that they are maintained, no one would attempt to introduce differences. No one would try to make a better elephant or a more useful reindeer, because improvement for their particular life is scarcely con- ceivable. The snow-camel has been altered. He has been made vastly larger and stronger than when wild, though the connection with the original stock is plain.
Other creatures are not so specialised, and were altered,— probably in no great time. But first it was necessary to " catch your hare." It is not difficult, and is certainly interesting, to picture the early and ambitious would-be pastoralist considering which of the animals in his native wood, or on the mountains near it, would pay best to catch, and how he was to tame them. He certainly went through some such process in his mind. In Europe, for instance, there were at least two large wild bovine animals, one a bison, the aurochs, the other a real wild bull,—not a bison. Whoever the first cattle-tamers were, they certainly decided to catch the latter, and had nothing to do with the bison, for they tamed the one and left the other severely alone.
It must have needed some courage to capture even the young of the dreaded urns in the Hercynian or Calydonian forests ; nor is it easy to conjecture how they were able to keep in their possession herds of animals naturally fierce, and of which the male descendants are, to this day, the most dangerous and uncertain of any domesticated animal. The difficulty of retaining the reclaimed stock is greatly increased because all grazing animals, in the absence of enclosure, which is not universal even in civilised Europe, have to be led out to feed daily, when they have every chance of re- suming the wild state. But it is difficult to suppose that our cattle, or those of the East, were first obtained in any other way. There exists in the Malay States a small wild ox, the anoa, which is perhaps the survival of one of the wild species from which the smaller Eastern breeds are descended. But it is no evidence that a domestic species is not descended from a wild ancestor, if this ancestor is not now existing. We should have known nothing of the wild bull of Europe were it not for the records of books and bones, and should not have had these if the breed, instead of existing down to historic times, had perished some four thou- sand years earlier, as they may well have done from the plains of India.
Pigs were probably a European " reclamation." In the tropical East no one wanted them, for they were neither wholesome as flesh nor givers of milk. But in every case, in Europe and Asia there is practically only one wild pig, except the babirussa, which may have been the origin of some of the Chinese breeds. In any case, the enterprising domesticator of pigs in any form must be honoured before the disciple of Confucius who is credited with having discovered, merely by accident, their merits when roasted. We can quite understand how the resolve arose. What could be more natural to the tribes- man or the village who already possessed a small and increasing herd of dairy animals reclaimed from the forest, than to follow this up by catching, either in nets or pitfalls, a family of young wild swine, and adding them to their farm stock ? Their prolific character must have been well known, and as Mahomet promised a blessing and angels' visits to the home which possessed three goats, so the neighbours must have looked with envy on the recurrent families of wild pig- lings in the wicker-fenced enclosures of the more adventurous. It is possible, even at this distant date, to trace under the artificially rounded form of the Tamworth breed, the long suspicions nose, the rufous bristles, and the thoughtful eye of its original wild ancestor. If the East troubled not with the pig, it probably gave to the wo rid its flocks of sheep and goats. Asia is the true home of the domesticated goat. It is there that it flourishes, and is held in honour. There, too, was the animal which by general consent is the original of the common domestic breed, the wild Paseng-goat, or ibex, call it which you please, of Asia Minor and Persia. There would not be the slightest difficulty in domesticating the young of several species of mountain sheep to-day, if this were desired. Difficult as the lambs are to catch, they are taken when very young on the mountains, and the only difference in their behaviour is that though all become as tame as the proverbial "pet lamb," some species—notably the Barbary wild sheep and the Indian burrhel—become more markedly friendly than others. All, wild goats and wild sheep alike, have short, smooth coats, though the Barbary sheep grows a woolly mane; but there is under wool in the fur of all the sheep, which care in domestication would increase. The tame species have lost their speed and agility on the English fields, but not on the Alpine pastures, where some of the breeds are not unlike the surviving wild species, the rnouffions of Sardinia. It is tempting and easy to imagine "lost animals" from which our tame ones have sprung. But except in the case of the vanished European, and perhaps Asiatic, wild cattle, there is no domesticated quadruped, from the rabbit and dog to the
camel, whose origin may not be safely traced to a wild ancestor now living, caught and tamed by personal enterprise and continued in man's service by transmission as property, of which this may have been one of the earliest forms.
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