Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
"He caught in hunter's toils (a blank number) of armi, turakhi, nali,
and yadi. Every one of these animals he placed in separate enclosures.
He brought up their young ones and counted them as carefully as
young lambs. As to the creatures called burkish, utrati (dromedaries?),
tishani, and dagari, he wrote for them and they came. The
dromedaries he kept in enclosures, where he brought up their young
ones. He entrusted each kind of animal to men of their own country to
tend them. There were also curious animals of the Mediterranean Sea,
which the King of Egypt sent as a gift and entrusted to the care of
men of their own land. The very choicest animals were there in
abundance, and birds of heaven with beautiful wings. It was a
splendid menagerie, and all the work of his own hands. The names of
the animals were placed beside them."
[Rome.]--The extravagant demands for the amphitheatre of ancient
Rome must have stimulated the capture of wild animals in Asia, Africa,
and the then wild parts of Europe, to an extraordinary extent. I
will quote one instance from Gibbon:--
"By the order of Probus, a vast quantity of large trees torn up by
the roots were transplanted into the midst of the circus. The
spacious and shady forest was immediately filled with a thousand
ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand fallow-deer, and a thousand
wild boars, and all this variety of game was abandoned to the
riotous impetuosity of the multitude. The tragedy of the succeeding
day consisted in the massacre of a hundred lions, an equal number of
lionesses, two hundred leopards, and three hundred bears."
Farther on we read of a spectacle by the younger Gordian of
"twenty zebras, ten elks, ten giraffes, thirty African hyenas, ten
Indian tigers, a rhinoceros, an hippopotamus, and thirty-two
elephants."
[Mexico.]--Gomara, the friend and executor of Herman Cortes, states:
--
"There were here also many cages made of stout beams, in some of
which there were lions (pumas); in others, tigers (jaguars); in
others, ounces; in others, wolves; nor was there any animal on four
legs that was not there. They had for their rations deer and other
animals of the chase. There were also kept in large jars or tanks,
snakes, alligators, and lizards. In another court there were cages
containing every kind of birds of prey, such as vultures, a dozen
sorts of falcons and hawks, eagles, and owls. The large eagles
received turkeys for their food. Our Spaniards were astonished at
seeing such a diversity of birds and beasts; nor did they find it
pleasant to hear the hissing of the poisonous snakes, the roaring of
the lions, the shrill cries of the wolves, nor the groans of the
other animals given to them for food."
[Peru.]--Garcilasso de la Vega (_Commentaries Reales_, v. 10), the
son of a Spanish conqueror by an Indian princess, born and bred in
Peru, writes:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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