ABSTRACT
The habit of keeping domestic animals must obviously have arisen in several ways, differing according to the kind of animal. The dog, the earliest animal domesticated, may originally have been attracted by the refuse-heaps of the village. The stage when a hunting tribe begins to confine itself to one particular kind of game, as, for example, when the North-American Indians followed the herds of bison from place to place, is the first in the transition to a nomadic life combined with herding. The North-American Indians and the Eskimo were ignorant of reindeer-herding. In Europe the natives were in the habit of catching reindeer, and tamed females were used as an aid to the hunt. It is possible that this custom of hunting reindeer, and also the fact that they move in herds, largely influenced their domestication.
