hardly suppose that domestic rabbits have often been selected for tameness
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 remarkable 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 animals have been modified. 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 when 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 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
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