Domesticated animals : $b Their relation to man and to his advancement in civilizationShaler, Nathaniel Southgate
History
Domesticated animals : $b Their relation to man and to his advancement in civilization
Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate
Domestic animals
Next after the contribution which the kindred of the bulls, have made
by their strength, we must set that which has come from their milk.
Although this substance can be obtained in small quantities from
several other domesticated animals, the species of the genus Bos alone
have yielded it in sufficient quantities greatly to affect the
development of man. It is difficult to measure the importance of the
addition to the diet, both of savage and civilized peoples, which milk
affords. It is a fact well known to physiologists that in its simple
form this substance is a complete food, capable when taken alone of
sustaining life and insuring a full development of the body. It is
indeed a natural contrivance exactly adapted to afford those materials
which are required for the development and restoration of creatures
essentially akin to our own species. Those races which avail themselves
extensively of it in their dietary are the strongest and most enduring
the world has known. The Aryan folk are indeed characteristically
drinkers of milk and users of its products, cheese and butter. It may
well be that their power is in some measure due to this resource.
[Illustration: Winnowing Grain in Egypt]
In our horned cattle man won to domestication creatures which were
admirably suited to promote his advancement from savagery to
civilization. Indeed, the possession of these animals appears to have
been a prime condition of his advancement. With them, however, as with
the camel, there came little in the way of those sympathetic qualities
which have made it possible for our race to establish affectionate
relations with other captive forms. Long intercourse with man has, it
is true, somewhat diminished the wildness of these creatures, though
the males remain the most indomitably ferocious of all our
servants. The truth seems to be that the bovine animals have but
little intellectual capacity, and it has in no wise served the
purposes of man to develop such powers of mind as they have. We have
ever been given to asking little of them, save docility. This we have
in a high measure won with our milch cows, which of all our
domesticated creatures are perhaps the most absolutely submissive; the
more highly developed of them being little more than passive producers
of milk, almost without a trace of instincts or emotions except such
as pertain to reproduction and to feeding. It is a noteworthy fact
that in all the great literature of anecdote concerning our
domesticated animals, there is hardly a trace of stories which tend to
show the existence of sagacity in our common cattle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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