964 Influence of circumstances on the Actions of Animals. 
Those who have observed much, and who have consulted great 
collections, have been able to convince themselves that, according as 
the circumstances of habitat, of exposure, climate, nourishment and 
habit of life, etc., change ; the characters of size, form, proportion 
of parts, color, consistence, activity and labors, of animals change 
in proportion. That which nature does slowly we can do every 
day, by changing suddenly, in the case of a living vegetable, the 
circumstances by which it and all the individuals of its kind are 
surrounded. All botanists know that vegetables which are taken 
from their native place into gardens to be cultivated, gradually 
undergo changes which render them finally unrecognizable. Many 
plants naturally very hairy become smooth, or nearly so; numbers 
of those which were creeping and trailing, straighten their stems ; 
others lose their spines or their roughness; still others possessing 
woody and long-lived (perennial) stems in warm climates which 
they inhabited, pass, in our country, into an herbaceous state (many 
are only annual plants); finally the dimensions of their parts 
undergo very considerable changes. These effects of changes 
of circumstances are so well known that botanists do not like 
to describe garden plants unless they have been recently culti- 
vated. Is not cultivated wheat (Triticum sativum) a vegetable, 
brought by man to the state in which we actually see it? Who 
can tell me in what country a like plant has its habitat without 
being there the result of culture? Where do we find in nature our 
cabbages, our lettuces, ete., in the state in which we possess them in 
our kitchen gardens? Is it not the same in regard to many animals 
which domestication has changed or considerably modified? How 
many different races among our poultry and domestic pigeons have 
we procured by raising them under diverse circumstances and in 
different countries, and how vain would be our search to find such 
in nature! Those which are the least changed, without doubt by 
less ancient domestication, and because they do not live in a climate 
strange to them, present no less, in the condition of certain of their 
parts, great differences, produced by habits which we have caused 
them to contract. Thus our domestic ducks and geese find their 
type in wild ducks and geese; but ours have lost the power to rise 
high in the air, and to traverse great distances by flying ; there has 
been, in fact, a real change in the state of their parts, com- 
