W DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 233 



ever have thought of teaching, or probably could have 

 taught, the tumbler-pigeon to tumble — an action which, as 

 I have witnessed, is performed by young birds that have 

 never seen a pigeon tumble. We may believe that some one 

 pigeon showed a slight tendency to this strange habit, and 

 that the long-continued selection of the best individuals in 

 successive generations made tumblers what they now are ; 

 and near Glasgow there are house-tumblers, as I hear from 

 Mr. Brent, which cannot fly eighteen inches high without 

 going head over heels. It may be doubted whether any one 

 would have thought of training a dog to point, had not 

 some one dog naturally shown a tendency in this line ; and 

 this is known occasionally to happen, as I once saw, in a 

 pure terrier : the act of pointing is probably, as many have 

 thought, only the exaggerated pause of an animal preparing 

 to spring on its prey. When the first tendency to point 

 was once displayed, methodical selection and the inherited 

 effects of compulsory training in each successive generation 

 would soon complete the work ; and unconscious selection is 

 still in progress, as each man tries to procure, without 

 intending to improve the breed, dogs which stand and hunt 

 best. On the other hand, habit alone in some cases has 

 sufficed ; hardly any animal is more difficult to tame than 

 the young of the wild rabbit ; scarcely any animal is tamer 

 than the young of the tame rabbit ; but I can hardly sup- 

 pose that domestic rabbits have often been selected for 

 tameness alone; so that we must attribute at least the 

 greater part of the inherited change from extreme wildness 

 to extreme tameness, to habit and long-continued close con- 

 finement. 



Natural instincts are lost under domestication : a remark- 

 able instance of this is seen in those breeds of fowls which 

 very rarely or never become "broody," that is, never wish 

 to sit on their eggs. Familiarity alone prevents our seeing 

 how largely and how permanently the minds of our domestic 

 animals have been modified. It is scarcely possible to doubt 

 that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog. All 

 wolves, foxes, jackals, and species of the cat genus, when 

 kept tame, are most eager to attack poultry, sheep, and 

 pigs; and this tendency has been found incurable in dogs 

 which have been brought home as puppies from countries 

 such as Tierra del Fuego and Australia, where the savages 

 do not keep these domestic animals. How rarely, on the 

 other hand, do our civilized dogs, even when quite young, 



