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 t