Chap. VII. 
DOMESTIC INSTINCTS. 
215 
work; and unconscious selection is still at work, as each 
man tries to procure, without intending to improve the 
breed, dogs which will stand and hunt best. On the 
other hand, habit alone in some cases has sufficed; no 
animal is more difficult to tame than the young of the 
wild rabbit; scarcely any animal is tamer than the young 
of the tame rabbit; but I do not suppose that domestic 
rabbits have ever been selected for tameness; and I 
presume that we must attribute the whole of the inhe¬ 
rited change from extreme wildness to extreme tameness, 
simply to habit and long-continued close confinement. 
Natural instincts are lost under domestication: a re¬ 
markable instance of this is seen in those breeds of 
fowls which very rarely or never become broody,’’ 
that is, never wish to sit on their eggs. Familiarity 
alone prevents our seeing how universally and largely 
the minds of our domestic animals have been modified 
by domestication. It is scarcely possible to doubt that 
the love of man has become instinctive in the dog. All 
wolves, foxes, jackals, and species of the cat genus, when 
kept tame, are most eager to attack poultry, sheep, and 
pigs; and this tendency has been found incurable in 
dogs which have been brought home as puppies from 
countries, such as Tierra del Fuego and Australia, where 
the savages do not keep these domestic animals. How 
rarely, on the other hand, do our civilised dogs, even 
Vvhen quite young, require to be taught not to attack 
poultry, sheep, and pigs! No doubt they occasionally 
do make an attack, and are then beaten; and if not 
cured, they are destroyed; so that habit, with some 
degree of selection, has probably concurred in civilising 
by inheritance 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, in the same way as it is so plainly instinctive in 
