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Show ACQUIRlm INSTINCTS IIERJ.;DITARY. [Ch. Ill. made solely for the support, gratification, and instruction of mankind. Many species most hostile to our persons or property mul-tiply in spite of our effot·ts to repress them ; others, on the contrary, are intentionally augmented many hundred-fold in number by our exertions. In such instances we must imagine the relative resources of man and of species, friendly or inimical to him, to have been prospectively calculated and adjusted. To withhold assent to this supposition would be to refuse what we must grant in respect to the economy of Nature in every other part of the organic creation ; for the various species of contemporary plants and animals have obviously their relative forces nicely balanced, and their respective tastes, passions, and instincts, so contrived, that they are all in perfect harmony with each other. In no other manner could it happen, that each species surrounded as it is by countless dangers should be enabled to maintain its ground for periods of considerable duration. The docility of the individuals of some of our domestic species extending, as it does, to attainments foreign to their natural habits and faculties, may perhaps have been conferred with a view to their association with man. But lest species should be thereby made to vary indefinitely, we find that such habits are never transmissible by generation. A pig has been trained to hunt and point game with great activity and steadiness :l<• ; and other learned individuals, of the same species, have been taught to spell; hut such fortuitous acquirements never become hereditary, for they have no relation whatever to the exigencies of the animal in a wild state, and cannot therefore be developments of any instinctive propensities. An animal in domesticity, says M. F. Cuvier, is not essen· tially in a different situation in regard to the feeling of restraint from one left to itself. It lives in society without "' In the New Forest, nQar Ringwood, Hants1 by Mr. Toomer, keeper of Broomy Lodge. Ch. Ill.] INFLUENCE OF DOMESTICATION. 43 constraint, because without doubt it was a social animal, and it conforms itself to the will of man, because it had a chief to which in a wild state it would have yielded obedience. There is nothing in its new situation that is not conformable to its propensities ; it is satisfying its wants by submission to a master, and makes no sacrifice of its natural inclinations. All the social animals when left to themselves form herds more or less numerous, and all the individuals of the same herd kngw each other, are mutually attached, and will not allow a strancre 0 individual to join them. In a wild state, moreover, they obey some individual, which by its superiority has become the chief of the herd. Our domestic species had originally this sociability of disposition, and no solitary species, however easy it may be to tame it, has yet afforded true domestic races. We merely, therefore, develope to our own advantage, propensities which propel the individuals of certain species to draw near to their fellows. . The sheep which we have reared is induced ·to follow us as ' 1t would be led to follow the flock among which it was brought up; and when individuals of gregarious species have been accustomed to one master, it is he alone whom they acknowledge as their chief, he only whom they obey.-'' The elephant only allows himself to be led by the carnac whom he has adopted; the dog itself, reared in solitude with its master manifests a hostile disposition towards all others; and every~ body knows how dangerous it is to be in the midst of a herd of cows, in pasturages that are little frequented, when they have not at their head the keeper who takes care of them.'' "Everything, :herefore, tends to convince us, that formerly men were only, w1th regard to the domestic animals, what those who are particularly charged with the care of them still are, namely, membersofthe society, which these animals form among themselves, and that they are only distinguished in the geneml mass by tbe authority which they have been enabled to assume from their superiority of intellect. Thus, every social animal which recognizes man as a member, and as the chief of its |
