THE EVOLUTION OF INSTINCT 123 



him, even without the warning cry, and that the fear of a 

 person in white or yellow would have continued all their 

 lives." 



Birds have been pursued by hawks for countless gener- 

 ations, but there is, according to Lloyd Morgan, no evidence 

 that they have an instinctive fear of hawks, any more than 

 of large moving objects in general which are seen in the air. 

 Such fear is readily taught the young, and different species of 

 hawks, as Hudson has shown, come to inspire different 

 degrees of fear according to their varied powers of harm. 



While instinctive fear of particular enemies may exist hi 

 certain animals, the evidence that it has in any case been 

 recently acquired is entirely inadequate. There seems to 

 be more evidence that wildness has been partially lost in 

 the young of some domesticated animals. Darwin states 

 that "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 domestic rabbit "; and also that the young 

 of the tame duck are more tame than those of the wild duck 

 a statement which is confirmed by the observations of 

 Dr. Rae. The evidence that the diminution of wildness is 

 due to the disuse of the instinct is not, however, sufficient. 

 The differences may have been due, hi part at least, to dif- 

 ferences among the wild ancestry of the species, or they may 

 have arisen through selection, perhaps unconsciously,during 

 domestication. The wilder individuals would be more apt 

 to escape or fare ill than the tamer ones, and there would 

 therefore be a certain tendency for selection to diminish the 

 wild instinct. It would require more careful study and 

 comparison of the instincts of the young of domesticated 

 and of wild species than has yet been made to furnish ade- 

 quate evidence for the loss of fear through disuse. 



We shall not enter, at any great length, into a discussion of 



