232 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



from such countries as Tierra del Fuego and Australia, where 

 the savages do not keep these domestic 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, are destroyed ; so 

 that habit and some degree of selection have probably con- 

 curred in civilizing 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 bankiva, 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 danger-chuckle, they will 

 run (more especially young turkeys) from under her, and 

 conceal themselves in the surrounding thickets." The MS 

 adds, " Pigeons are not as constantly kept as poultry, and 

 every fancier knows how difficult it is to keep his favourites 

 safe from their incorrigible enemy — the cat." 



As additional evidence that instincts may be lost, or as 

 Handcock says, " languish " under domestication, it is enough 

 to point to the instinct of incubation having become aborted 

 in the Spanish hen ; and to the maternal instincts having 

 similarly dwindled in cattle in certain parts of Germany, 

 where for hundreds of generations it has been the custom to 

 remove the calves from the mothers immediately after birth.f 

 The same authority says that sheep will allow strange lambs 

 to suck them in countries where it has long been the custom 

 to change lambs, which is not the case with other sheep. 



* Tn the MSS detailed evidence on this point is given, from which I quote 

 the following : — 



" This was the case with a native dog from Australia, whelped on board 

 Bhip, which Sir J. Sebright tried for a year to tame, but which 'if led near 

 shesp or poultry became quite furious.' So again Captain FitzRoy says that 

 not one of the many dogs procured from the natives of Tierra del Fuego and 

 Patagonia which were brought to England coidd easily be prevented from 

 indulgence in the most indiscriminate attack on poultry, young pigs, &c.' 

 (Colonel H. Smith, on Dogs, 1810, p. 214; and Sir J. Sebright, on Instinct, 

 p. 12. Also Waterton's Essay on Nat. Hist., p. 197, for extreme wildness of 

 young pheasants at sight of a dog.)" And the MSS also contain a letter from 

 Sir James Wilson, giving Mr. Darwin an account of a tamed Dingo, which 

 obstinately persisted in killing poultry and ducks whenever he got loose. 



t Stuorn, Ueber Racen, &c, s. 82. 



