50 LEAVES FROM MY NOTE-BOOK. 



characteristics have disappeared. Lord Orford, as is well known, 

 crossed his famous greyhounds, which failed in courage with a 

 bulldog ; and "after the sixth or seventh generation," says Youatt, 

 " there was not a vestige left of the form of the bulldog, but his 

 courage and indomitable perseverance remained." This inherit- 

 ance of mental qualities is perhaps not so extraordinary in an 

 animal which shows itself capable of such development of brain 

 as does the dog. "Some dogs' brains are high and rounded," says 

 Dr. Burt Wilder, "whilst others are long, low, and narrow in front. 

 In the latter the olfactory lobes are visible for about half their 

 extent, when the brain is seen from above, but they are ivholly con- 

 cealed by the hemispheres in other breeds.* 



DuCKS.t 



The duck has been comparatively a late arrival amongst 

 domesticated auimals ; it was not known to the ancient Egyptians, 

 the Jews of the Old Testament, or the Greeks of the Homeric 

 period; indeed, the tame duck was not known to Aristotle. About 

 eighteen centuries ago, Columella and Varro speak of the necessity 

 of keeping ducks in netted enclosures like other wild fowl, so that 

 even at this period there was danger of them flying away. As 

 Columella advises those persons who wish to increase their stock 

 of ducks to collect the eggs of wild birds and place them under a 

 hen, it is evident that the duck had not yet become a naturalised 

 and prolific inmate of the Roman poultry yard. 



An interesting experiment was made by Mr. Hewitt in trying 

 the effect of domestication on the wild duck. \ His experience 

 differed from that of Tiburtius in Sweden, who, after rearing wild 

 ducks for three generations, found they did not vary even in a 

 single feather. Mr. Hewitt, on the contrary, found that his young 

 birds always changed and deteriorated in character in the course 

 of two or three generations, notwithstanding that great care was 

 taken to prevent them from crossing with tame ducks. After the 

 third generation his birds lost the elegant carriage of the wild 

 species, and began to acquire the gait of the common duck. The 



* lbid.,^Z^. 



t pp. 291—93. 



X journal of Horticulture, 1862, p. 773, and 1863. p. 39. 



