Acclimatised Animals

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 17, 20 October 1939, Page 42

Acclimatised Animals

The problem of home food production in Britain, which Mr. Lloyd George and others are attacking with so much energy, indicates (an exchange points out) the limitations of Britain’s home food possibilities. Frank Buckland was greatly interested in this question about 1860 when he noted that only

four additions had been made to our domesticated animals since the Christian era. These are said to be the turkey, introduced in 1524; the musk-duck, in 1650; the golden pheasant, in 1725; and the silver pheasant in 1740, "But," said Frank Buckland, "the turkey alone is an answer to the sceptic, who believes we have the best of everything; and if he be a gastronomer, I appeal to that love of good eating, which we all have more or less, and ask him if it were not for the acclimatisation which took place in 1524, what would we have for dinner at Christmas to face his roast beef?" This tremendous’ rhetorical poser remains unanswered to this day, but as Bompas wrote (in "The Life of Frank Buckland"), "he aimed to make science practical. To find out a new kind of food or to multiply an old one, was to do practical good to a hungry people; and to this end he henceforward devoted his chief energies." His Acclimatisation Sosiety was founded in 1860, but though, not always with happy results. We have acclimatised certain animals for the sake of their fur, how much has been done to acclimatise animals for food?