The Australian women habitually feed the puppies they intend to rear from their own breasts, and show an affection to them equal, if not exceeding, that to their own infants.  Sir Charles Nicholson informs me that he has known an extraordinary passion for cats to be demonstrated by Australian women at Fort Phillip.

[New Guinea Group.]—­Captain Develyn is reported (Bennett, Naturalist in Australia, p. 244) to say of the island of New Britain, near Australia, that the natives consider cassowaries “to a certain degree sacred, and rear them as pets.  They carry them in their arms, and entertain a great affection for them.”

Professor Huxley informs me that he has seen sucking-pigs nursed at the breasts of women, apparently as pets, in islands of the New Guinea Group.

[Polynesia.]—­The savage and cannibal Fijians were no exceptions to the general rule, for Dr. Seemann wrote me word that they make pets of the flying fox (bat), the lizard, and parroquet.  Captain Wilkes, in his exploring expedition (ii. 122), says the pigeon in the Samoon islands “is commonly kept as a plaything, and particularly by the chiefs.  One of our officers unfortunately on one occasion shot a pigeon, which caused great commotion, for the bird was a king pigeon, and to kill it was thought as great a crime as to take the life of a man.”

Mr. Ellis, writing of these islands (Polynesian Researches, ii. 285), says:—­

“Eels are great favourites, and are tamed and fed till they attain an enormous size.  Taoarii had several in different parts of the island.  These pets were kept in large holes, two or three feet deep, partially filled with water.  I have been several times with the young chief, when he has sat down by the side of the hole, and by giving a shrill sort of whistle, has brought out an enormous eel, which has moved about the surface of the water and eaten with confidence out of his master’s hand.”

[Syria.]—­I will conclude this branch of my argument by quoting the most ancient allusion to a pet that I can discover in writing, though some of the Egyptian pictured representations are considerably older.  It is the parable spoken by the Prophet Samuel to King David, that is expressed in the following words:—­

“The poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up:  and it grew up together with him and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him as a daughter.”

We will now turn to the next stage of our argument.  Not only do savages rear animals as pets, but communities maintain them as sacred.  The ox of India and the brute gods of Egypt occur to us at once; the same superstition prevails widely.  The quotation already given from Pigafetta is in point; the fact is too well known to readers of travel to make it necessary to devote space to its proof.  I will therefore simply give a graphic account, written by M. Jules Gerard, of Whydah in West Africa:—­