THE KEY TO ANIMAL BEHAVIOR 



horse or his ox, but how wide of the mark it would be 

 to say that he is under the dominion of his instincts 

 as these animals are under the dominion of theirs! 



We are all more or less the creatures of habit, but 

 of acquired habits rather than inherited habits. 

 Man has filled the world with his acquisitions, and 

 changed the face of continents with the tools he has 

 invented. He performs hardly an action that is not 

 the result of some acquired habit or for which he 

 does not draw upon some acquired or stored-up 

 power. Nature gave him the power to make sounds, 

 but his language, his music, he has invented; she 

 gave him the power to walk, but his power to sail, 

 to fly, to cross continents faster than the fleetest 

 horse, he has given himself; she gave him the power 

 to hurl a stone or a spear or a club; but the power to 

 hurl tons of metal miles upon miles, he has given 

 himself. 



What the wild creatures shall do, where they 

 shall live, what they shall eat, is determined, I 

 repeat, by their organization. Acquired habit or 

 experience modifies the natural course of their lives 

 very little. The scarcity of their staple food may 

 drive them to an unaccustomed diet, as when the 

 crossbills from the north fell upon the peach orchard 

 in my neighborhood one May and cut out the germ 

 of the peach blossoms. Hunger will drive a fox to 

 eat corn which he cannot digest, or fear of the mon- 

 goose will drive rats to nest in trees. 

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