island in the Sea of Aral, when first discovered by Butakoff, the saigak
antelopes, which are "generally very timid and watchful, did not fly from
us, but on the contrary looked at us with a sort of curiosity." So, again,
on the shores of the Mauritius, the manatee was not at first in the least
afraid of man, and thus it has been in several quarters of the world with
seals and the morse. I have elsewhere shown[17] how slowly the native birds
of several islands have acquired and inherited a salutary dread of man: at
the Galapagos Archipelago I pushed with the muzzle of my gun hawks from a
branch, and {21} held out a pitcher of water for other birds to alight on
and drink. Quadrupeds and birds which have seldom been disturbed by man,
dread him no more than do our English birds the cows or horses grazing in
the fields.
It is a more important consideration that several canine species evince (as
will be shown in a future chapter) no strong repugnance or inability to
breed under confinement; and the incapacity to breed under confinement is
one of the commonest bars to domestication. Lastly, savages set the highest
value, as we shall see in the chapter on Selection, on dogs: even
half-tamed animals are highly useful to them: the Indians of North America
cross their half-wild dogs with wolves, and thus render them even wilder
than before, but bolder: the savages of Guiana catch and partially tame and
use the whelps of two wild species of _Canis_, as do the savages of
Australia those of the wild Dingo. Mr. Philip King informs me that he once
trained a wild Dingo puppy to drive cattle, and found it very useful. From
these several considerations we see that there is no difficulty in
believing that man might have domesticated various canine species in
different countries. It would indeed have been a strange fact if one
species alone had been domesticated throughout the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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