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Domestication of Animals
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freedom of savage life has no charms for his temperament; so the end of it
is, that with a heavy heart he turns back to the habitation he had quitted.
When animals thoroughly enjoy the excitement of wild life, I presume
they cannot be domesticated, they could only be tamed, for they would
never return from the joys of the wilderness after they had once tasted
them through some accidental wandering.
Gallinas, or guinea-fowl, have so little care for comfort, or indeed for
man, that they fall but a short way within the frontier of domestication. It
is only in inclement seasons that they take contentedly to the poultry-
yards.
Elephants, from their size and power, are not dependent on man for
protection; hence, those that have been reared as pets from the time they
were calves, and have never learned to dread and obey the orders of a
driver, are peculiarly apt to revert to wildness if they once are allowed to
wander and escape to the woods. I believe this tendency, together with the
cost of maintenance and the comparative uselessness of the beasts, are
among the chief causes why Africans never tame them now; though they
have not wholly lost the practice of capturing them when full-grown, and
of keeping them imprisoned for some days alive. Mr. Winwood Reade’s
account of captured elephants, seen by himself near Glass Town in
Equatorial Western Africa, is very curious.
Usefulness to Man.—To proceed with the list of requirements which a
captured animal must satisfy before it is possible he could be permanently
domesticated: there is the very obvious condition that he should be useful
to man; otherwise, in growing to maturity, and losing the pleasing
youthful ways which had first attracted his captors and caused them to
make a pet of him, he would be repelled. As an instance in point, I will
mention seals. Many years ago I used to visit Shetland, when those
animals were still common, and I heard many stories of their being tamed:
One will suffice :—A fisherman caught a young seal; it was very
affectionate, and frequented his hut, fishing for itself in the sea. At length
it grew self-willed and unwieldy; it used to push the children and snap at
strangers, and it was voted a nuisance, but the people could not bear to kill
it on account of its human ways. One day the fisherman took
