He mentions that he himself purchased a young bear, and adds:—­

“The red races are fond of pets and treat them kindly; and in purchasing them there is always the unwillingness of the women and children to overcome, rather than any dispute about price.  My young bear used to rob the women of the berries, they had gathered, but the loss was borne with good nature.”

I will again quote Hearne, who is unsurpassed for his minute and accurate narratives of social scenes among the Indians and Esquimaux.  In speaking of wolves he says:—­

“They always burrow underground to bring forth their young, and though it is natural to suppose them very fierce at those times, yet I have frequently seen the Indians go to their dens and take out the young ones and play with them.  I never knew a Northern Indian hurt one of them; on the contrary, they always put them carefully into the den again; and I have sometimes seen them paint the faces of the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.”

[South America.]—­Ulloa, an ancient traveller, says:—­

“Though the Indian women breed fowl and other domestic animals in their cottages, they never eat them:  and even conceive such a fondness for them, that they will not sell them, much less kill them with their own hands.  So that if a stranger who is obliged to pass the night in one of their cottages, offers ever so much money for a fowl, they refuse to part with it, and he finds himself under the necessity of killing the fowl himself.  At this his landlady shrieks, dissolves into tears, and wrings her hands, as if it had been an only son, till seeing the mischief past mending, she wipes her eyes and quietly takes what the traveller offers her.”

The care of the South American Indians, as Quiloa truly states, is by no means confined to fowls.  Mr. Bates, the distinguished traveller and naturalist of the Amazons, has favoured me with a list of twenty-two species of quadrupeds that he has found tame in the encampments of the tribes of that valley.  It includes the tapir, the agouti, the guinea-pig, and the peccari.  He has also noted five species of quadrupeds that were in captivity, but not tamed.  These include the jaguar, the great ant-eater, and the armadillo.  His list of tamed birds is still more extensive.

[North Africa.]—­The ancient Egyptians had a positive passion for tamed animals, such as antelopes, monkeys, crocodiles, panthers, and hyenas.  Mr. Goodwin, the eminent Egyptologist, informed me that “they anticipated our zoological tastes completely,” and that some of the pictures referring to tamed animals are among their very earliest monuments, viz. 2000 or 3000 years B.C.  Mr. Mansfield Parkyns, who passed many years in Abyssinia and the countries of the Upper Nile, writes me word in answer to my inquiries;—­