196 CHANGES OF HABIT OR INSTINCT [CHAP. VIIL 



distant point, we should assuredly call these actions instinctive. 

 Domestic instincts, as they may be called, are certainly far less 

 fixed than natural instincts ; but they have been acted on by far 

 less rigorous selection, and have been transmitted for an incom- 

 parably shorter period, under less fixed conditions of life. 



How strongly these domestic instincts, habits, and dispositions 

 are inherited, and how curiously they become mingled, is well 

 shown when different breeds of dogs are crossed. Thus it is 

 known that a cross with a bull-dog has affected for many genera- 

 tions the courage and obstinacy of greyhounds ; and a cross with 

 a greyhound has given to a whole family of shepherd-dogs a 

 tendency to hunt hares. These domestic instincts, when thus 

 tested by crossing, resemble natural instincts, which in a like 

 manner become curiously blended together, and for a long period 

 exhibit traces of the instincts of either parent : for example, Le 

 Roy describes a dog, whose great-grandfather was a wolf, and this 

 dog showed a trace of its wild parentage only in one way, by not 

 coming in a straight line to his master, when called. 



Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as actions which 

 have become inherited solely from long-continued and compulsory 

 habit ; but this is not true. No one would ever have thought of 

 teaching, or probably could have taught, the tumbler-pigeon to 

 tumble, an action which, as I have witnessed, is performed by 

 young birds, that have never seen a pigeon tumble. We may 

 believe that some one pigeon showed a slight tendency to this 

 strange habit, and that the long-continued selection of the best 

 individuals in successive generations made tumblers what they 

 now are ; and near Glasgow there are house-tumblers, as I hear 

 from Mr. Brent, which cannot fly eighteen inches high without 

 going head over heels. It may be doubted whether any one 

 would have thought of training a dog to point, had not some one 

 dog naturally shown a tendency in this line ; and this is known 

 occasionally to happen, as I once saw, in a pure terrier : the act 

 of pointing is probably, as many have thought, only the exag- 

 gerated pause of an animal preparing to spring on its prey. When 

 the first tendency to point was once displayed, methodical selection 

 and the inherited effects of compulsory training in each successive 

 generation would soon complete the work ; and unconscious 

 selection is still in progress, as each man tries to procure, 

 without intending to improve the 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 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 



