Part 32

The art of domestication will make no progress if it occupies itself only with the services which tamed animals may render to man.

It ought to proceed in the main from the consideration of the service which man may render the animals;

Of his duty to initiate all the tenants of this world into a gentler, more peaceable, and superior society.

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In the barbarism in which we are still plunged, we know of only two conditions for the animal, absolute liberty or absolute slavery; but there are many forms of demi-servitude which the animals themselves would willingly accept.

The small Chili falcon (cernicula), for example, loves to dwell with his master. He goes alone on his hunting expeditions, and faithfully returns every evening with what he has captured, to eat it en famille. He feels the want of being praised by the father, flattered by the dame, and, above all, caressed by the children.

Man, formerly protected by the animals, while he was indifferently armed, has gradually risen into a position to become their protector, especially since he has had powder, and enjoyed the possibility of shooting down from a distance the most formidable creatures. He has rendered birds the essential service of infinitely diminishing the number of the robbers of the air.

He may render them another, and not a less important one--that of sheltering at night the innocent species. Night! sleep! complete abandonment to the most frightful chances! Oh! harshness of Nature! But she is justified, inasmuch as she has planted here below the far-seeing and industrious being who shall more and more become for all others a second providence.

"I know a house on the Indre," says Toussenel, "where the greenhouses, open at even, receive every honest bird which seeks an asylum against the dangers of the night, where he who has delayed till late knocks with his bill in confidence. Content to be immured during the night, secure in the loyalty of their host, they fly away happy in the morning, and repay him for his hospitality with the spectacle of their joy and their unrestricted strains."

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I shall exercise great caution in speaking of their domestication, since my friend, M. Isidore Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, reopens in so praiseworthy a manner this long-forgotten question.

An allusion will suffice. Antiquity in this special branch has bequeathed us the admirable patrimony which has supported the human race: the domestication of the dog, the horse, and the ass; of the camel, the elephant, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and poultry.

What progress has been made in the last two thousand years? What new acquisition?

Two only, and these unquestionably trivial: the importation of the turkey and the China pheasant.

No direct effort of man has accomplished so much for the welfare of the globe as the humble toil of the modest auxiliaries of human life.

To descend to that which we so foolishly despise, to the poultry-yard, when one sees the millions of eggs which the ovens of Egypt hatch, or with which our Normandy loads the ships and fleets that every year traverse the Channel, one learns to appreciate how the small agencies of domestic economy produce the greatest results.

If France did not possess the horse, and some person introduced it, such a conquest would be of greater benefit to her than the conquest of the Rhine, of Belgium, of Savoy; the horse alone would be worth three kingdoms.

But here now is an animal which represents in itself the horse, the ass, the cow, the goat; which combines all their useful qualities, and which yields moreover an incomparable wool; a hardy, robust animal, enduring cold with wonderful vigour. You understand, of course, that I refer to the lama, which M. Isidore Geoffrey Saint Hilaire exerts himself, with so laudable a perseverance, to naturalize in France. Everything seems leagued in his despite: the fine flock at Versailles has perished through malice; that of the Jardin des Plantes will perish through the confined area and dampness of the locality.

The conquest of the lama is ten times more important than the conquest of the Crimea.

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But again, this species of transplantation needs a generosity of means, a combination of precautions, let us say a tenderness of education, which are rarely found united.

One word here--one small fact--whose bearing is not small.

A great writer, who was not a man of science, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, had remarked that we should never succeed in transplanting the animal unless we imported along with him the plant to which he was especially partial. This observation fell to the ground, like so many other theories which excite the philosophical smile, and which men of science name poetry.

But it has not been made in vain, for an enlightened amateur had formed here, in Paris, a collection of living birds. However constant his attentions, a very rare she-parrot which he had obtained remained obstinately barren. He ascertained in what kind of plant she made her nest, and commissioned a person to procure it for him. It could not be got alive; he received it leafless and branchless; a simple dead trunk. It mattered not; the bird, in this hollow trunk discovered her accustomed place, and did not fail to make therein her nest. She laid eggs, she hatched them, and now her owner has a colony of young ones.

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To re-create all the conditions of abode, food, vegetable environment, the harmonies of every kind which shall deceive the exile into a forgetfulness of his country, is not only a scientific question, but a task of ingenious invention.

To determine the limit of slavery, of freedom, of alliance and collaboration with ourselves, proper for each individual creature, is one of the gravest subjects which can occupy us.

A new art is this; nor shall you succeed in it without a moral gravity, a refinement, a delicacy of appreciation which as yet are scarcely understood, and shall only exist perhaps when Woman undertakes those scientific studies from which she has hitherto been excluded.