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Domestication of Animals
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requires a more intimate knowledge of the habits of beasts than is ever
acquired by sportsmen who use more perfect weapons. A savage is
obliged to steal upon his game, and to watch like a jackal for the leavings
of large beasts of prey. His own mode of life is akin to that of the
creatures he hunts. Consequently, the savage is a good gamekeeper;
captured animals thrive in his charge, and he finds it remunerative to take
them a long way to market. The demands of ancient Rome appear to have
penetrated Northern Africa as far or farther than the steps of our modern
explorers. The chief centres of import of wild animals were Egypt,
Assyria (and other Eastern monarchies), Rome, Mexico, and Peru. I have
not yet been able to learn what were the habits of Hindostan or China. The
modern menagerie of Lucknow is the only considerable native effort in
those parts with which I am acquainted.
[Egypt. ]—The mutilated statistical tablet of Karnak (Trans. R. Soc.
Lit., 1847, p. 369, and 1863, p. 65) refers to an armed invasion of Armenia
by Thothmes III., and the payment of a large tribute of antelopes and
birds. When Ptolemy Philadelphus fêted the Alexandrians (Athenaeus, v.),
the Ethiopians brought dogs, buffaloes, bears, leopards, lynxes, a giraffe,
and a rhinoceros. Doubtless this description of gifts was common. Live
beasts are the one article of curiosity and amusement that barbarians can
offer to civilised nations.
[Assyria.]—Mr. Fox Talbot thus translates (Journal Asiatic Soc., xix.
124) part of the inscription on the black obelisk of Ashurakbal found in
Nineveh and now in the British Museum
“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
