CHANGES OF HABIT OR INSTINCT 269 



breed; dogs which stand and hunt best. On the other hand, 

 habit alone in some cases has sufficed; hardly any animal is 

 more difficult to tame than the young of the wild rabbit; 

 scarcely any animal is tamer than the young of the tame rab- 

 bit; but I can hardly suppose that domestic rabbits have often 

 been selected for tamencss alone ; so that we must attribute at 

 least the greater part of the inherited change from extreme 

 wildness to extreme tameness, to habit and long-continued 

 close confinement. 



Natural instincts are lost under domestication : a remark- 

 able 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 prevents our seeing how 

 largely and how permanently the minds of our domestic ani- 

 mals 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 

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

 civilised dogs, even when quite young, require to be taught 

 not to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs ! No doubt they occa- 

 sionally 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 civilising 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 Callus 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 tur- 

 keys) from under her, and conceal themselves in the sur- 

 rounding grass or thickets; and this is evidently done for the 

 instinctive purpose of allowing, as we see in wild ground- 

 birds, their mother to fly away. But this instinct retained by 



