which cannot fly eighteen inches high without going head over heels. It
may be doubted whether any one would have thought of training a dog to
point, had not some one dog naturally shown a tendency in this line; and
this is known occasionally to happen, as I once saw, in a pure terrier:
the act of pointing is probably, as many have thought, only the
exaggerated pause of an animal preparing to spring on its prey. When the
first tendency to point was once displayed, methodical selection and the
inherited effects of compulsory training in each successive generation
would soon complete the work; and unconscious selection is still in
progress, as each man tries to procure, without intending to improve the
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 rabbit; but I can 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 H