Chap. VIII.} IN DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 329 



poultry, sheep, and pigs! No doubt they occasionally 

 do make an attack, and are then beaten; and if not cured, 

 they are destroyed; sc that habit and some degree of se- 

 lection have probably concurred in civilising by inherit- 

 ance 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 in- 

 formed by Captain Hutton that the young chickens of 

 the parent-stock, the Gallus 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 turkeys) from 

 under her, and conceal themselves in the surrounding 

 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 re- 

 tained by our chickens has become useless under domes- 

 tication, for the mother-hen has almost lost by disuse 

 the power of flight. 



Hence, we may conclude, that under domestication 

 instincts have been acquired, and natural instincts have 

 been lost, partly by habit, and partly by man selecting 

 and accumulating, during successive generations, pe- 

 culiar mental habits and actions, which at first appeared 

 from what we must in our ignorance call an accident. 

 In some cases compulsory habit alone has suiSced to pro- 

 duce inherited mental changes; in other cases, com- 

 pulsory habit has done nothing, and all has been the 

 result of selection, pursued both methodically and un- 

 consciously: but in most eases habit and selection have 

 probably concurred. 



