CHAPTER VI DOMESTIC PLANTS AND ANIMALS Still will the seeds, tho' chosen with toilsome pains, Cull not each year the largest and the best. -VIRGIL Roughly speaking, there are about as many domestic animals on earth as there are human beings. This statement omits all pets as well as birds and insects. The total is made up as follows: Cattle, 432,630,000; horses, 105,400,000; asses and mules, 20,000,000; swine, 162,000,000; goats, 117,200,000; sheep, 588,000,000. These comprise 1,416,030,000. To the number we must add the buffalo, carabao, elephants, camels and reindeer whose distribution is limited. The reader must turn to some good geography to get an adequate picture of their location for their distribution varies even within a given country. Such a table as that on page 152 is misleading unless the unequal areas of the different countries, their stage of civilization, and the use made of the animals are kept in mind. While India has one-fourth of the cattle of the world it has but ten per square mile as compared with one hundred in Germany and one hundred and sixty in Holland. Uruguay has eight cattle to the inhabitant as compared to two persons per cow in the United States. Since cattle are sacred in India neither their flesh nor milk is eaten to any extent nor are they exported but are used, together with the buffalo, as draft animals and beasts of burden. In our own country there are large cattle ranches where condensed milk is used and no cows kept for milk; while the Pennsylvania farmers often sell their butter fats and use oleo for the table. DOMESTIC ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 1 (Figures show percentages in different countries.) The early history of the domestication of animals is almost unknown. We do not know the time nor the place of the first taming of any of the more important species. Moreover, the animals have varied so much under domestication, and have been crossed so much with related forms both tame and wild, that the determination of the wild originals is extremely difficult, so difficult that Darwin doubted if it could ever be done. Most of the larger mammals were well represented in Europe, Asia and North Africa and the earliest domestication might, therefore, have been in any of the three. Since the oldest civilizations were located about the eastern end of the Mediterranean it is there, naturally, that the earliest records are found. It is noteworthy that not a single animal of special importance has been added to the domestic list in the last two thousand years in spite of the vast extension of the area of animal culture. Cattle The first domestic cattle appeared at least 6000 years B.C. They are found in the Swiss lake dwellings of early neolithic times. These cattle were of slender build and short horns, the uneven forehead narrow between the horns but wide between the large eyes. This is still the dominant type of Asia Minor and North Africa and is represented in Europe and America by the Jersey. The wild original is unknown. Keller derives it from the banteng but Antonius rejects the evidence and prefers to believe that there was a small and perhaps more localized form of the Aurochs. The aurochs (Bos primigenius) of several closely related races was widely distributed from Africa, through Asia and Europe to Spain. Under the name of "rimu" it was hunted by the Assyrians and Job asked if man could make it stand at his crib and cultivate his field. It survived wild in South Germany until the Middle Ages, until 1400 in East Prussia and until about 1627 in a herd near Warsaw. This was a large animal with long horns. When and where it was domesticated we do not know though it seems to have been outside of Europe, as it was known to the Hamites of Egypt. Turkestan seems to have been an early distribution center and later the Balkan states. Possibly it spread to Europe through Crete and the other Ægean centers of the Minoan culture |