31S M. Cuvier on the Domesticat'ioii 



out. In fact this phenomenon would never have been observed, 

 if the animals which have presented it to us could have nourish- 

 ed and perfected, in the age in which they naturally diminish in 

 strength, the faculties which they have received, and which we 

 possess in common with them, by means of that faculty which 

 belongs to us exclusively, and permits us to prolong, as it were 

 indefinitely, the exercise of the former ; if, in a word, for their 

 preservation, nature in place of strength had bestowed on them 

 reflection. 



It is not merely truths which may be deduced from contin- 

 gent and fortuitous actions that we obtain from animals kept in 

 a state of captivity ; these animals also afford us information re- 

 specting those which result from their necessary actions, from ac- 

 tions which seem to be most invariably determined by their in- 

 timate nature, by the destination which they have received as to 

 the point of the earth upon which they have been cast ; from 

 actions, in a word, which their instinct produces ; and instinct 

 exists without alteration only in animals of the wild race. 



So long as beavers had only been observed in their native li- 

 berty, it was seen that those which live collected into bands in 

 wild countries construct habitations, and that the solitary indi- 

 viduals, such as are sometimes met with, especially in populous 

 countries, made their retreat in the natural excavations of the 

 banks of lakes and rivers ; and it was concluded from these 

 facts, *' that these animals do not labour and build by a physi- 

 cal power or necessity, like ants and bees ; that they do it by 

 choice, and that their industry ceases whenever the presence of 

 man has diffused its terror among them." It is BufFon who 

 tells us so, and it is he whom I quote in preference ; for of all 

 the authors who have written upon the nature of animals, he is 

 incontestibly the one who formed the most elevated and the just- 

 est ideas regarding it. If ho^^ever that great naturalist had 

 been disposed to observe some of these solitary beavers, if he 

 had formed the idea of placing them in suitable circumstances, 

 and of giving them the materials which they commonly employ 

 in building, earth, wood, stone, he would have seen that their 

 solitude, and the presence of man, did not make them intermit 

 their labours, that they still took care to build ; and instead of 

 seeing in the houses and dams of beavers united into bodies, 



