ent instruments with which to resist an assault.

The sagacity of the pigs is probably, in part at least, to be
attributed to the fact that in their native state they are communal
animals, all the species of their family being accustomed to live
gregariously, so that for ages they have had the training which every
social organization, however simple, affords. They are, moreover,
omnivorous feeders, accustomed to subsist on a great variety of
food--a habit which seems in all cases to promote the development
of the intelligence in animals.

Although the pigs by their nature afforded the best opportunity for
developing an intellectual animal which has come to us through our
domesticated creatures, no effort whatever has been made by selection to
develop the latent mental capacities of this species. It is perhaps the
only form of those which man has subjugated which by his treatment he
tends to degrade. In the time to come, when men will be held to a better
accountability for the treatment of their captives, the condition of
these animals will afford a fair field for the reformer's care.

The geologist who is acquainted with the mammalian life of the Middle
Tertiary period readily notes the fact that the variety in genera and
species appears to be much greater than it is at the present time. A
great number of forms, differing somewhat widely from those now in
existence, then abounded in the Americas and the Old World. It may at
first sight seem unfortunate that man did not have the chance to essay
his domesticative arts on that older and apparently richer life. A
closer examination, however, leads us to see that the species of that
time, though more numerous than those of the present, were on the whole
less fitted for our use than the fewer but more completely
differentiated kinds with which we have had to deal. The multitude of
kinds which we find in the Mesozoic period indicates that the life was
in a state more experimental than that to which it has attained. A host
of forms on their way towards the specialization which has now been
attained have been removed from the sphere, in the manner of a
scaffolding from a completed structure. That which has been left remains
because it has successfully accomplished the task of reconciliation with
environment, or, in simpler phrase, because it has learned to do things
which were useful and profitable in a more perfect manner.

As an illustration of the fact that the animals of