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Domestication of Animals
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his son, no sooner came to the throne, than he indulged in shooting them down before his
admiring wives, and now he has only one buffalo and a few parrots left.”
In Kouka, near Lake Tchad, antelopes and ostriches are both kept
tame, as I was informed by Dr. Barth.
[South Africa.]—The instances are very numerous in South Africa
where the Boers and half-castes amuse themselves with rearing zebras,
antelopes, and the like; but I have not found many instances among the
native races. Those that are best known to us are mostly nomad and in a
chronic state of hunger, and therefore disinclined to nurture captured
animals as pets; nevertheless, some instances can be adduced. Livingstone
alludes to an extreme fondness for small tame singing-birds (pp. 324 and
453). Dr. (now Sir John) Kirk, who accompanied him in later years,
mentions guinea-fowl—that do not breed in confinement, and are merely
kept as pets—in the Shiré valley, and Mr. Oswell has furnished me with
one similar anecdote. I feel, however, satisfied that abundant instances
could be found if properly sought for. It was the frequency with which I
recollect to have heard of tamed animals when I myself was in South
Africa, though I never witnessed any instance, that first suggested to me
the arguments of the present paper. Sir John Kirk informs me that:
“As you approach the coast or Portuguese settlements, pets of all kinds become very
common; but then the opportunity of occasionally selling them to advantage may help to
increase the number; still, the more settled life has much to do with it.”
In confirmation of this view, I will quote an early writer, Pigafetta
(Hakluyt Coll., ii. 562), on the South African kingdom of Congo, who
found a strange medley of animals in captivity, long before the demands
of semi-civilisation had begun to prompt their collection: —
“The King of Congo, on being Christianised by the Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth
century, “signified that whoever had any idols should deliver them to the lieutenants of the
country. And within less than a month all the idols which they worshipped were brought
into court, and certainly the number of these toys was infinite, for every man adored what
he liked without any measure or reason at all. Some kept serpents of horrible figures, some
worshipped the greatest goats they could
