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 it with him in his boat, and dropped it in a stormy sea, far from home; the stratagem was unsuccessful; in a day or two the well-known scuffling sound of the seal, as it floundered up to the hut, was again heard; the animal had found its way home.  Some days after the poor creature was shot by a sporting stranger, who saw it basking and did not know it was tame.  Now had the seal been a useful animal and not troublesome, the fisherman would doubtless have caught others, and set a watch over them to protect them; and then, if they bred freely and were easy to tend, it is likely enough he would have produced a domestic breed.

The utility of the animals as a store of future food is undoubtedly the most durable reason for maintaining them; but I think it was probably not so early a motive as the chief’s pleasure in possessing them.  That was the feeling under which the menageries, described above, were established.  Whatever the despot of savage tribes is pleased with becomes invested with a sort of sacredness.  His tame animals would be the care of all his people, who would become skilful herdsmen under the pressure of fear.  It would be as much as their lives were worth if one of the creatures were injured through their neglect.  I believe that the keeping of a herd of beasts, with the sole motive of using them as a reserve for food, or as a means of barter, is a late idea in the history of civilisation.  It has now become established among the pastoral races of South Africa, owing to the traffickings of the cattle-traders, but it was by no means prevalent in Damara-Land when I travelled there in 1852.  I then was surprised to observe the considerations that induced the chiefs to take pleasure in their vast herds of cattle.  They were valued for their stateliness and colour, far more than for their beef.  They were as the deer of an English squire, or as the stud of a man who has many more horses than he can ride.  An ox was almost a sacred beast in Damara-Land, not to be killed except on momentous occasions, and then as a sort of sacrificial feast, in which all bystanders shared.  The payment of two oxen was hush-money for the life of a man.  I was considerably embarrassed by finding that I had the greatest trouble in buying oxen for my own use, with the ordinary articles of barter.  The possessor would hardly part with them for any remuneration; they would never sell their handsomest beasts.