THE PROBLEM OF DOMESTICATION 235 



and with the pigeons show how admirably these creatures are 

 fitted to obey the will of man when he has a mind to take 

 charge of their destiny. 



Perhaps the greatest conquests which we have yet to make 

 among the birds will be won from the species which have the 

 habit of dwelling mainly or altogether upon the ground. 

 These, as experience shows, can be more readily brought to 

 the uses of man than the species which are free by their 

 strong wings to wander through the realms of air. There 

 are very many of these ground birds the domestication of 

 which has never been fairly essayed. There are perhaps a 

 hundred species which in one part of the world or another 

 might afford .valuable additions to our resources, those of 

 ornament or of economy, and yet within three centuries only 

 one of these, the turkey, has been brought to the domesticated 

 state. The greater part of our game birds, such as the quail, 

 pheasants, and partridges, though they appear on slight ex- 

 periments to be untamable, could probably by continuous 

 effort be reduced to perfect domestication. For ages they 

 have been harried by man in a manner which has insured a 

 great fear of his presence. We have indeed through our 

 hunting instituted a very thorough-going and continuous 

 system of selection which has tended to affirm in these creat- 

 ures an intense fear of our kind. Only the more timorous 

 have escaped us, and year after year we proceed to remove 

 with the gun the individuals which by chance are born with 

 any considerable share of the primitive tolerance of man's pres- 

 ence. It is not to be expected that the chicks of these species 

 will at once accept relations with our kind. The domestica- 

 tion of many of these forms is to be desired, not only on 

 account of the excellent quality of their flesh, but because of 



