other animals fit for like uses, or, better still,
for novel uses. Briefly, we are bound to keep
what we have; to utilise it in the most profitable
way, and to increase our stock, if possible.

To take care of what one has, is such common-
place wisdom, that it seems strane to recommend
it in these enlightened days. Yet the
barbarism of past ages still stalks erect amidst
the civilisation of the nineteenth century. Man
amuses himself more than ever in destroying the
benefactions whom Nature has presented to
him, and whom he might retain by simply
abstaining from mischief. The war which man
wages, under pretence of shooting and fishing,
against every animal he is able to destroy, is
as fierce as it was during the middle ages, and is
aggravated by the possession of more destructive
arms.

For our own sakes at least, we ought, to
spare the enemies of our enemies; we might.
even encourage allies and auxiliaries who feed
on vermin which destroy the fruits of the earth.
On this head, France (the south) deserves a
more severe lecture than England does. The
insectivorous birds are our steady friends. Rare
in winter—for few remain in the country all the
year round—nature sends them to us in flocks
on the return of spring. As soon as the insects
begin their ravages, these are checked by our
beneficient visitors, who are nevertheless received
as if they were a scourge. Some are wantonly
destroyed, out of mere prejudice. Let a windhover
or an owl flutter over a field, and the farmer will
not rest until the intruder is nailed to the door
of the barn, whose expected contents pay the
penalty of the crime. Others, against whom
there exists no popular ill-will—the redbreast,
the wagtail, and even the songsters of the
grove, blackcaps, redstarts, the nightingale
himself—are massacred in heaps as small game
for the table (always in the south), where they
figure on the dish rather than render any
service. There also exists a band of ogres, who
wander about in the guise of bird-nesting
children.

As a consequence, France is more ravaged by
insects than England. With a climate more
favourable to insect development, and with a feebler
preventive check, insect foes prove their power
to injure. The swarm of cockchafers in May and
June are only outdone by African locusts.
Weevils of all sorts make the gardener's heart
sad. There are pollen-eating beetles, which,
during their reign, hardly allow him to have a
perfect flower. Before a rosebud is half opened,
they will burrow through it to devour the
anthers; and, what is still worse, they render
the blossom of his fruit abortive. Man has only
to be surrounded by feathered friends, to have
these insidious enemies destroyed.

Before looking forward to what M. Saint-Hilaire
hopes may still be effected in the way of
domestication, let us glance at what has been
done already. He attaches very great importance
to the study of domestic animals, and comes
to the conclusion that there is no such thing as
immutability of species or fixity of zoological
type. Consequently, he considers captive
animals as creatures whom we may mould almost
according to our will. A mixed multitude of
some hundred and fifty thousand species of
living creatures offers itself for our selection;
and out of it we have domesticated, he says,
forty-seven. These forty-seven creatures are
divided into four categories: auxiliary, helpers,
as the ferret and the cat; alimentary, for food,
as the pig; industrial, for manufactures, as
the silkworm; and accessory, agreeable
superfluities, as the canary-bird and guinea-pig.
The elephant is not included in the list. In
spite of its power and its eminent services, we
cannot yet say that we "possess" it; it will not
reproduce in domesticity.

And where do these forty-seven possessions
come from? About some, there is no difficulty.
The Canada goose answers for itself; the golden,
silver, and collared, pheasants we have from
China. The canary-bird is ticketed with his
correct certificate of birth. The turkey and the
musk duck were brought from North and South
America respectively. At the conquest of
Peru, the guinea-pig was found already
domesticated. The same uncertainty hangs about the
dates of the domestication of the lama and the
alpaca, although we may be pretty sure that the
Andes are their geographical home. The cochineal
insect was reared on cactus plants by the
Mexicans before the conquest. The buffalo
was known only in the wild state by Aristotle
and the ancient naturalists. Its domestication
was Oriental, and of no great antiquity. It
was introduced into Italy in the year five
hundred and ninety-five, or five hundred and
ninety-six. Its progress northward has therefore
been checked by the Alps for twelve
centuries and a half: a remarkable proof of its
inferior utility to the almost cosmopolitan ox.
The rabbit is a native of Spain (where it appears
to have been first domesticated), of Corsica, and
probably of other parts of southern Europe.
Whether the south of France was also the
primitive home of the rabbit, is uncertain, but in
the first century before the Christian era it had
so multiplied that the "pernicious animal,"
according to Strabo, extended its ravages from
Spain to Marseilles. Subsequently, it became
such a nuisance in the Balearic Islands that the
inhabitants petitioned Cæsar Augustus to send
troops to their assistance. The ferret was a
consequence of the rabbit. Its specific
determination is not completely settled; its nearest
wild relation is the polecat. But Strabo says
the ferret comes from Libya, where the polecat
has not yet been found.

The domestication of the common duck was
still incomplete at the close of the Roman
Republic. It is mainly owing to the Romans that
the guinea-fowl is become a European bird.
Alexander's expedition enriched Greece with the
peacock. The goose was domesticated in Greece
as far back as the time of Homer. For the
common pheasant, the bird of Phasis, we must
traverse history, and remount to the mythological
days of the Argonauts.