328 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



bit ; scarcely any animal is tamer than the young of the 

 tame rabbit ; but I can hardly suppose 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 tame- 

 ness to habit and long-continued close confinement. 



Natural instincts are lost under domestication : a re- 

 markable 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 pre- 

 vents 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 do- 

 mestic animals. How rarely, on the other hand, do our 

 civilized dogs, even when quite young, require to be 

 taught not to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs ! No doubt 

 they occasionally do make an attack, and are then beaten ; 

 and, if not cured, they are destroyed ; so that habit and 

 some degree of selection have probably concurred in civil- 

 izing by inheritance our dogs. On the other hand, young 

 chickens have lost, wholly by habit, that fear of the dog 

 and cat which no doubt was originally instinctive in 

 them ; for I am informed by Captain Hutton that the 

 young chickens of the parent-stock, the Gallus tankiva, 

 when reared in India under a hen, are at first excessively 

 wild. So it is with young pheasants reared in England 

 under a hen. It is not that chickens have lost all fear, 

 but fear only of dogs and cats, for if the hen gives the 



