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Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as actions which have become inherited solely from long-continued and compulsory
but
is not true. No one would ever have thought of teaching, or probably could have taught, the tumbler-pigeon to tumble,— an action which, as I have witnessed, is performed by young birds, that have never seen a pigeon tumble. We may believe that some one pigeon showed a slight tendency to this strange habit, and that the long-continued selection of the best individuals in successive generations made tumblers what they now are; and near Glasgow there are house-tumblers, as I hear from Mr. Brent, 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
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
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;
animal is more
→in most cases, to
tame than the young of the wild rabbit; scarcely any animal is tamer than the young of the tame rabbit; but I
suppose that domestic rabbits have
been selected for
→alone; so
that we must attribute
→the
inherited change from extreme wildness to extreme tameness,
to habit and long-continued close confinement.
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