INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



l)ut it is contended that they are never domesticated in the true 

 sense of the term. Every one is familiar with the difference 

 between the domestic state of the cat and that of the dog. The 

 latter is domesticated in the truest sense of the term. 



A careful distinction must be maintained between the state of 

 tameness and that of domesticity. The species of animals which 

 are susceptible of these states are wholly different. 



Domesticity descends from the parent to the offspring. Slavery 

 here descends as an heritage. 



Tameness is produced in the individual by the immediate treat- 

 ment of man. The offspring of a tame bear would be as wild as 

 the parent was before its subjugation. 



The young of tame animals must, like the parents, be tamed. 

 The young of domestic animals are already domestic. 



Gregarious animals, endowed as they are with the instinct of 

 sociability, select by common consent a chief, to whom they yield 

 obedience. In the domesticated state, man taking the place and 

 exercising the influence of that chief, receives the same instinc- 

 tive obedience. Domesticity is, therefore, an animal instinct, of 

 which man avails himself to attract into his service animals of the 

 sociable species. 



Tameness, on the contrary, is not an instinct but a habit. It 

 is produced originally by fear, and maintained by the creation of 

 artificial wants which man alone can satisfy. 



Frederick Cuvier relates an incident which strikingly illustrates 

 the distinction between the true instinct of sociability and the 

 fictitious state of tameness produceable by habit. 



A lioness, in the menagerie of the Garden of Plants, had been 

 reared in the same cage with a dog. The two animals became 

 familiar friends, and a mutual attachment was manifested. The 

 dog having died, was replaced by another, which the lioness 

 readily enough accepted and adopted, appearing to suffer nothing 

 from the loss of her old friend and companion. In the same manner 

 she survived the second dog, showing no signs of grief, and 

 as readily as before received a third dog, with whom she 

 continued to associate in the same manner. This third dog, 

 however, outlived the lioness. When the latter died, a touching 

 spectacle was presented. The poor dog refused to leave the cage 

 in which the body of his friend lay. His melancholy increased 

 from day to day. The third day he refused all food, and on the 

 seventh died. 



The agencies by which man first tames and later domesticates 

 animals are few and obvious. They consist chiefly of the alter- 

 nate privation and satisfaction of their physical appetites, and 

 174 



