Hardiness.—­It must be able to shift for itself and to thrive, although it is neglected; since, if it wanted much care, it would never be worth its keep.

The hardiness of our domestic animals is shown by the rapidity with which they establish themselves in new lands.  The goats and hogs left on islands by the earlier navigators throve excellently on the whole.  The horse has taken possession of the Pampas, and the sheep and ox of Australia.  The dog is hardly repressible in the streets of an Oriental town.

Fondness of Man.—­Secondly, it must cling to man, notwithstanding occasional hard usage and frequent neglect.  If the animal had no natural attachment to our species, it would fret itself to death, or escape and revert to wildness.  It is easy to find cases where the partial or total non-fulfilment of this condition is a corresponding obstacle to domestication.  Some kinds of cattle are too precious to be discarded, but very troublesome to look after.  Such are the reindeer to the Lapps.  Mr. Campbell of Islay informed me that the tamest of certain herds of them look as if they were wild; they have to be caught with a lasso to be milked.  If they take fright, they are off to the hills; consequently the Lapps are forced to accommodate themselves to the habits of their beasts, and to follow them from snow to sea and from sea to snow at different seasons.  The North American reindeer has never been domesticated, owing, I presume, to this cause.  The Peruvian herdsmen would have had great trouble to endure had the llama and alpaca not existed, for their cogeners, the huanacu and the vicuna, are hardly to be domesticated.

Zebras, speaking broadly, are unmanageable.  The Dutch Boers constantly endeavour to break them to harness, and though they occasionally succeed to a degree, the wild mulish nature of the animal is always breaking out, and liable to balk them.

It is certain that some animals have naturally a greater fondness for man than others; and as a proof of this, I will again quote Hearne about the moose, who are considered by him to be the easiest to tame and domesticate of any of the deer tribe.  Formerly the closely-allied European elks were domesticated in Sweden, and used to draw sledges, as they are now occasionally in Canada; but they have been obsolete for many years.  Hearne says:—­

“The young ones are so simple that I remember to have seen an Indian paddle his canoe up to one of them, and take it by the poll, without experiencing the least opposition, the poor harmless animal seeming at the same time as contented alongside the canoe as if swimming by the side of its dam, and looking up in our faces with the same fearless innocence that a house lamb would.”

On the other hand, a young bison will try to dash out its brains against the tree to which it is tied, in terror and hatred of its captors.