CiiAP. VII. IN DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 207 



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 light tendency to this strange 

 habit, and tlie long-continued selection of the best individ- 

 uals 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 exaggerated pause of an animal 

 preparing to sjiring 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 will 

 stand and hunt best. On the other hand, habit alone in some 

 cases has sufficed ; hardly any animal is more diflicult, in most 

 cases, to tame than the young of the Avild rabbit ; scarcely any 

 animal is tamer than tlic young of the tame rabbit; bull 

 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 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 " broo<ly," that is, never wish 

 to sit on tlieir eggs. Familiarity alone prevents our seeing 

 how largely and how permanently tlie minds of our domestic 

 animals have been modified. It is scarcely possible to doubt 

 that the love of man has become instinctive in tlie dog. 

 All wolves, foxe.s, jackals, and species of the cat genus, when 

 kept tame, an; most eager to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs; 

 and this tendency has been found incural)le in dogs which 

 liave been l)rought home as jiuppies from coimtries, such 

 as Tierra del Fuego and Australia, where the savages do 



