Mr. Mitchell's decease is likely to prove a
serious loss to the society in much more than
meets the eye. It is hardly too much to say
that it throws the society several years behindhand.
There are people in Paris quite capable
of laying out a public garden and of designing
elegant receptacles for the accommodation of
foreign animals; but there is no one possessed
of his knowledge of the possibilities and the
capabilities of birds and beasts in general, and
of his experience of what has been doing—what
successes and what failures have taken place
in the great English menageries during the last
five–and–twenty years. From what we see in the
garden, as far as it is completed, and from the
critical flourishes of trumpets which we read
in the French scientific journals, it would
appear that the Acclimatation Society have started
with the dreams of domesticability that were
current sixty years ago. They seem to have
more faith in the theories of Buffon and Temminck,
than they would put in the experience of
Yarrell and Mitchell, were those gentlemen still
spared to instruct them. Ostriches are to supply
us with poultry–beef, and now and then
treat our children and other light weights to
pleasant trips on birdback. Hoccos, guans, and
curassows are to become a valuable addition to
our poultry–yards. In short, all the zoological
experiments ending in non–success are to be
verified over again, forgetting that the taming
of an individual and the ready multiplication
of the race in domesticity are quite distinct and
different processes. Our stock of domestic
elephants would soon be at end, if we did not
continually catch wild ones from the woods. It
would hardly pay to replenish our poultry–yards
in this way with curassows from South America.
True, they do breed in captivity, exactly rarely
enough, and in sufficiently small numbers to
prove that their utility as domestic poultry is
null. The Cracidæ, the whole family of guans,
&c., have had their fair trial in the late Lord
Derby's menagerie at Knowsley, and in the
Regent's–park. The Acclimatation Society may
spare themselves the trouble of trying them
again.

The society is rich in rare and valuable geese
and bernicles, and also possesses a pair of that
very elegant and pleasing bird the black–necked
swan; but Mr. Mitchell would not have allowed
a crowd of pairs of various species to throng
together and bicker in the same small pond, if
he had any intention of their propagating. For
that, each pair must be as isolated and
undisturbed as possible. In this department many a
British park has attained greater success than
is likely to befal the Bois de Boulogne. The
weaker species of swan especially require to be
protected from the bullying and the persecution
of their stronger congeners. The graceful snow–
white swan of our ornamental waters, the Cygnus
olor, is a selfish and relentless tyrant. Were he
introduced to the haunts of the black–necked
swan in South America, he would probably
exterminate the native species. Perhaps, after all,
the society's bonâ fide utilitarian triumph may
be limited to the naturalisation of a useful
silkworm; and the society may well be content,
seeing that a really new and really domestic
creature is not introduced once in a hundred
years. How many birds have been domesticated
in Europe since the Christian era? Two or
three only; the turkey, the China goose, and
the musk duck; because it is doubtful whether
we can allow you the guinea–fowl. Nor can we
grant, as really domestic, birds which, like
canaries, are kept in cages or aviaries, or which,
though tame, as many geese and swans, are
obliged to be pinioned to prevent their flying
away to the wilderness. Of insects domesticated
for their usefulness, we have bees and silkworms;
and what besides? The cochineal.
Several domesticate themselves against our
wills, and may have their utility; I do not
dislike to see a spider or two about the house,
particularly during a gnatty and fly–blown season;
but my housekeeper remonstrates against the
indulgence of this fancy. A learned physician
has recommended the employment of a swarm
of mosquitoes as a substitute for blisters and
leeches combined, in cases of coma. But insects
in general need no Society of Acclimatation
to care for them. In hot countries they are our
masters rather than our slaves; on which account
we may fairly congratulate ourselves upon
living in a temperate climate.

The society is endeavouring to found a Philosophical
Menagerie, to serve for the investigation
of the laws in virtue of which animals pass
from the wild to the domesticated state, and in
which the public can follow the patient labours
of man, who, "calling in the brute to the aid
of nascent economy, gradually raises it to the
dignity of being useful, and thus, by the benefits
of domesticity, creates one by one the animated
instruments of industry." Thus, if we take for
example the most intelligent of these faithful
and dumb auxiliaries, the dog which has been
the least modified by man is the Australian dog.
Scarcely emerged from the condition of a savage,
this prick–eared animal has beneath his silky
hair a sort of wool or down which is, as it were,
the natural clothing of his race, and which our
domestic dogs have entirely lost. He does not
bark; barking, on the part of the civilised dog,
is an acquired faculty. After the Australian
dog would come that of the Esquimaux. If the
former expresses by his ardent eye, his savage
gait, his angular outline, and his gross habits
(civilised dogs are never gross in their habits;
the word cynical is applicable only to wild races
of dogs), the social condition of the least
industrious and the most debased human tribe on
earth, the Esquimaux dog (whose instinct is
limited, or nearly so, to the dragging of sledges
over ice) manifests the wants of a civilisation
still very slightly complicated, but already
capable of appropriating the strength of that dog
and of the animal kingdom to a certain order
of services. After the Esquimaux would come,
in their order of dignity, the dogs belonging to
the barbarous or the semi–barbarous peoples of
Africa and the New World; next, those of the