Page - 269 - in The Origin of Species

CHANGES OF HABIT OR INSTINCT 269 breed; dogs which stand and hunt best. On the other hand, habit alone in some cases has sufficed; 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 tame rab- bit; but I can hardly suppose that domestic rabbits have often been selected for tamencss alone ; so that we must attribute at least the greater part of the inherited change from extreme wildness to extreme tameness, to habit and long-continued close confinement. Natural instincts are lost under domestication : a remark- able 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 largely and how permanently the minds of our domestic ani- mals have been modified. It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love ofman 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 when quite young, require to be taught not to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs ! No doubt they occa- sionally do make an attack, and are then beaten; and if not cured, they are destroyed ; so that habit and some degree of selection have 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; for I am informed by Captain Hutton that the young chickens of the parent-stock, the Callus 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 tur- keys) from under her, and conceal themselves in the sur- rounding 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 retained by