Primate of England

“ The chief thought that has occurred to me as the result of my tour is that we in England take little interest in the breeding and acclimatization of wild animals as compared with the Germans, or even Americans. ”

“ The Primates, or apes, are, as we have seen, the highest order of the great class of mammals. Most of them, like other comparatively defenseless vertebrates, are gregarious or even social.3 They have a feeling of kind, if not of kindness, [Pg 7] toward one another. This sociability, together with the family as a unit of social structure, has contributed incalculably to human intellectual and moral development. Man is a Primate, a distant cousin of the highest apes, though no one of these represents our “furry arboreal ancestor with pointed ears.” ”

“ On coming out of the Tower, we were led to a small house close by, where are kept variety of creatures, viz.—three lionesses; one lion of great size, called Edward VI. from his having been born in that reign: a tiger; a lynx; a wolf excessively old—this is a very scarce animal in England, so that their sheep and cattle stray about in great numbers, free from any danger, though without anybody to keep them; there is, besides, a porcupine, and an eagle. All these creatures are kept in a remote place, fitted up for the purpose with wooden lattices, at the Queen’s expense. ”

“ The second point in this account is the singular local instinct which characterises the Dogs of Palestine and other eastern countries, and which is as much inbred in them as the faculty of marking game in the pointer, the combative nature in the bulldog, the exquisite scent in the bloodhound, and the love of water in the Newfoundland dog. In England, we fancy that the love of locality belongs especially to the cat, and that the Dog cares little for place, and much for man. But, in this case, we find that the local instinct overpowered the yearning for human society. ”

“ He brought over with him the animals which are domesticated in England to-day—the dog, the sheep, the cow, and the pig. Instead of the woolly rhinoceros and the curly-tusked mammoth, we find forest and marsh alive with wild boars, reindeer, wolves, and wild cats. ”

“ In former days, when the mammoth or hairy elephant, the extinct woolly rhinoceros, and the wild ox, together with the African hippopotamus and spotted hyaena roamed over the Thames valley and afforded sport to our prehistoric ancestors, England was joined to the Continent across what is now the English Channel ”

“ The same feeling of desire to display their skill and enterprise in search after birds' nests in early life renders the youth of England the enemy almost of the whole animal creation throughout their after career. The boy prides himself on his dexterity in throwing a stone or a stick; and he practises on almost every animal that comes in his way, till he never sees one without the desire to knock it down, or at least to hit it ”

“ Watch observes:
'I have positively ordered a trio of Windsor Fowls of Prince Albert, for you. It is the best breed in England, and they are much run after, and cannot be had without giving previous notice; but you are safe to have yours. I have engaged a friend to choose yours for you; and I consider it a great thing to get them direct from the Prince, for you must be aware that persons generally cannot exactly pick and choose from the Prince's own stock. ”

“ I accidentally discovered she firmly believed that the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals was a dogma of the Church of England—a conclusion founded upon the circumstance, that some years before, an English family holding this theory had resided in Macerata, where they excited much notice by purchasing and fondly cherishing sundry diseased horses, half-starved sheep, and other suffering quadrupeds, in whom, they declared, dwelt the spirits of their departed relations. ”

“ The English birds are more domestic [126] and familiar than ours; more directly and intimately associated with man; not, as a class, so withdrawn and lost in the great void of the wild and the unreclaimed. England is like a continent concentrated,—all the waste land, the barren stretches, the wildernesses, left out. The birds are brought near together and near to man. Wood-birds here are house and garden birds there. They find good pasturage and protection everywhere. ”

“ I said to him, "by your accent and by the looseness of your conversation, that you, like all Catholic Cats, are inclined to laugh and make sport, believing that confession will purge you, but in England we have another standard of morality. We are always respectable, even in our pleasures." [Pg 117]
This young Cat, struck by the majesty of English cant, listened to me with a kind of attention which made me hope I could convert him to Protestantism. ”

“ It is singular that it is only in England that you can find dogs, properly so called; abroad they have nothing but curs. I do not know anything more puzzling than the genealogy of the animals you meet with under the denomination of dogs in most of the capitals of Europe. ”

“ If any doubt this, let them ponder the history of those breeds of animals which have made England the stock nursery of the world, the perfection of which enables her to export thousands of animals at prices almost fabulously beyond their value for any purpose but to propagate their kind ”

“ In my opinion, the horse is the most noble of all animals, and, I am sorry to say, the most ill-used, at least in England; for I do not recollect a single instance of having seen a horse ill-treated on the Continent. In fact, you hardly ever see a horse on the Continent that is not in good working condition: you never meet the miserable, lame, blind, and worn-out animals that you do in England, which stumble along with their loads behind them till they stumble into their graves. ”

“ There is not a rose in England as rose as the rose flesh which borders your little rose mouth. A fisherman would search in vain in the depths of Ormus for pearls of the quality of your teeth. Your dear face, fine and gracious, is the loveliest that England has produced. Near to your celestial robe the snow of the Alps would seem to be red. Ah! those coats which are only to be seen in your fogs! Softly and gracefully your paws bear your body which is the culmination of the miracles of creation, but your tail, the subtle interpreter of the beating of your heart, surpasses it. ”

“ Even to myself the memories of my young days came to be regarded as very little more than mere imaginations, and I almost ceased to believe in them until, after years of mixing with modern men, mostly in towns, I fell in with the downland shepherds, and discovered that even here, in densely populated and ultra-civilized England, something of the ancient spirit had survived. ”

“ When about fourteen years of age, they fled from the tribe, going west to raise their family and establish the new species of Primates. And these new creatures are very properly denominated Primates since they were the direct and immediate animal ancestors of the human family itself. ”

“ At the present time in Europe, the smallest peculiarities are carefully attended to in our most useful animals, either from fashion, or as a mark of purity of blood. Many examples could be given; two will suffice. "In the Western counties of England the prejudice against a white pig is nearly as strong as against a black one in Yorkshire." ”

“ We have sometimes thought that the British Lion, from its plurality of lives, ought rather to be called the British Cat, especially from its readiness to come to the scratch when the altar or the throne may seem to be in jeopardy. Whatever may be the exact nature of the beast, it is certainly a very highly-trained and somewhat harmless animal, for any statesman may place his head in the British Lion's mouth, and remove it again without suffering the slightest injury. ”

“ We shall try to study the chief types of this race, and shall choose them in England in the fourteenth century, in a country and at an epoch when their social importance was considerable. The interest which attaches to them is of course manifold; the personality of these pardoners, professional pilgrims, and minstrels, extinct species, is in itself curious to scrutinize ”

“ My mother and father were gentle, bookish creatures with no understanding of animals. Even if a pony had to be bought for us children, every male thing of the family—uncles, nephews, tenth cousins—was summoned from every corner of England for his advice and experience. ”

“ All happiness and glory to them both; and when a child was born to them he would be its godfather, and if happily by that time there was a queen, she should be its godmother.
Then he recalled their happy boyhood's days in East Anglia, that joyful time when they first hunted and had many a mishap and fell from their horses when they pursued hare and deer and bustard in the wide open stretches of sandy country; and in the autumn and winter months when they were wild-fowling in the great level flooded lands where the geese and all wild-fowl came in clouds and myriads. ”

“ Of Beasts of the earth there be scarce 120 several kinds, and not much more of the Fowls of the Air, is the opinion of some Naturalists; there are not many kinds of Beasts in New-England, they may be divided into Beasts of the Chase of the stinking foot, as Roes, Foxes, Jaccals, Wolves, Wild-cats, Raccons, Porcupines, Squncks, Musquashes, Squirrels, Sables, and Mattrises; and Beasts of the Chase of the sweet foot, Buck, Red Dear, Rain-Dear, Elke, Marouse, Maccarib, Bear, Beaver, Otter, Marten, Hare. ”

“ Were many more dogs to be possessed in England than are now possessed, but were they to be all mongrels, among which none could be found capable of retrieving, or of following a fox or a hare with any discipline, one would have a right to say that the dog as a factor of our civilization had declined. ”

“ Indeed, it is quite open to argument that the founders of our breed, as it exists to-day, were imported into England at some far-off date when the duties of a sheepdog demanded of him fighting qualities no longer necessary. ”

“ But let the primate himself live, not, as is customary, here and there in the country, but in one city according to their selection, to the end that he may be better able to bring to bear the influence of the dignity that has fallen to him in resisting the Donatists. ”

“ Breeds which at the present time are highly valued in India are considered worthless in England. No doubt, when breeds are neglected, they degenerate; still we may believe that, as long as they are kept under the same conditions of life, characters once gained will be partially retained for a long time, and may form the starting-point for a future course of selection. ”

“ His origin can be specified even more accurately. The mammals fall into a number of fairly distinct groups, such as the Carnivores or flesh-eating animals, the Ungulates or hoofed animals, the Rodents or gnawing animals, the Cetaceans or whales, and several others. The highest of these mammalian groups, as usually reckoned, is the Primate or “first” order of the animal kingdom. This Primate group includes the various monkeys and apes and man. The ancestors of the human race are therefore to be sought somewhere in the order of Primates, past or present. ”

“ The Norman kings of England were for the most part sturdy soldiers, with a passion for the chase in their leisure hours. Very naturally, therefore, such pets as they possessed came under the head of knightly belongings, and were either horse and hound or hawk. In truth, they were too stern a race to spend much time in endearments of any kind. We can hardly imagine them tending a “fringie-pawe,” or toying with “spaniels gentle.” The aristocratic greyhound was their favorite instead, and they spared no pains to develop its peculiar excellencies. ”

“ When we bear in mind that Britain has now not one peculiar mammal, and France but few distinct from those of Germany, and so with Hungary, Spain, &c., but that each of these kingdoms possesses several peculiar breeds of cattle, sheep, &c., we must admit that many domestic breeds must have originated in Europe ”

“ He strode forward to hasten the first meeting between Primate and Feline on the common ground of civilization.
VI.
The catman's steps faltered. This alien, that had come from some distant star, was definitely primate in evolution. He knew primates—they had primates on Sscantoo, here—and primates were nasty animals. They were filled with curiosity—mass curiosity—that had been the basis for a platitude on Sscantoo: "Curiosity saved a mansee." When you killed or wounded a primate, the woods would fill up with curious, chattering hordes of his fellow-primates. ”

“ Someone has said that English Society revolves round the King and the horse—or, as he might have added, round the supreme symbols of human and animal development. That towards which everyone is striving—to breed finer and stronger creatures—is crystallized in these two superlative types. ”

“ Notwithstanding that the climate of England has never been esteemed particularly favourable to the horse, yet long-continued selection, both methodical and unconscious, together with that practised by the Arabs during a still longer and earlier period, has ended in giving us the best breed of horses in the world. ”

“ Our mariners are sea-dogs, and the modern bards vouch us to be in general boys of the bull-dog breed. The mascot bull-dogs in the shops at this moment serve the same end as the mascot emblems and mysterious hieroglyphics of the ancients, and the Egyptian who carried a scarabæus or an Eye of Horus, acted without doubt from the same simple, homely impulse as drives the modern Englishman to hang up the picture of a repulsive animal subscribed, “What we have we’ll hold”. ”