Reason and Instinct. 



6527 



where considerable and continued care and kindness and training had 

 been expended on the individuals in question. The general result 

 of domestication on all three families has not been in the direction of 

 improving their intellectual faculties, but the reverse, and, except in 

 the case of the horse, very much the reverse. With respect to 

 the sheep there can be no doubt that it is so ; in fact, we find in 

 the authority last quoted these expressions with respect to the present 

 psychical condition of the animal in question : — " The sheep, always 

 stupid or of the most simple understanding, from its birth timid and 

 inert, follows its dam the same feeble and defenceless animal that it is 

 destined to remain through life." 



Now in the case of the pig, the changes which result in the confor- 

 mation of its skull, in consequence of its being suffered to revert to its 

 original wild habits, are thus described by the same writer : — " Their 

 heads become larger, and the foreheads vaulted at the upper part," of 

 necessity to afford room for a brain of increased dimensions, as in the 

 case of the shepherd's dog, spaniel and water-dog quoted a page or two 

 back. Further, — (t The difference in the shape of the head between 

 the wild and domestic hog of America is very remarkable. Blumen- 

 bach long ago pointed out the great difference between the cranium 

 of our swine and that of the primitive wild boar. He remarked that 

 this difference is quite equal to that which has been observed between 

 the skull of the Negro and European." 



In the case of the horse again, " The heads of the wild horses are 

 larger, and their foreheads are of a round and arched form. Pallas 

 has confirmed this observation by an account of a race descended 

 from horses which have run wild in Eastern Siberia. These animals, 

 which are the remote offspring of domesticated horses, now differ from 

 the Russian breed in having larger heads and more pointed ears. 

 * * * He adds that their principal traits, or those which dis- 

 tinguish them from domestic breeds of the horse kind, and which may 

 be considered as characters acquired by the race since it ran wild in 

 the desert, are as follows : they have larger heads than domestic 

 horses with more vaulted foreheads ; the ears longer and bent more 

 forward." 



I need not occupy my readers' time and my own by looking at and 

 transcribing similar remarks about the ox. Let it suffice to observe 

 that Nature, when the animals just mentioned are given up to her 

 sole influence, occupies herself in remodelling their skulls until they 

 once again resume their original type ; and it would be vain to affect 

 to suppose that there is not a corresponding and commensurate 



