d 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[819]; and other learned individuals, of the same species,
have been taught to spell; but 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.

_Influence of domestication._--An animal in domesticity, says M. F.
Cuvier, is not essentially in a different situation, in regard to the
feeling of restraint, from one left to itself. It lives in society
without 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 know each other, are mutually attached, and will not allow
a strange 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 it 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 allows himself to be directed only 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.

"Ev