rity on rabbits,[43] and he enjoins the selection of the
handsomest and _best-tempered_ does to serve as breeders. To a still
greater extent man has favoured tameness unconsciously and indirectly.
He has systematically selected the largest and most prolific animals,
and has thus doubled the size and the fertility of the domestic rabbit.
In consciously selecting the largest and most flourishing individuals
and the best and most prolific mothers, he _must_ have unconsciously
selected those rabbits whose relative _tameness_ or placidity of
disposition rendered it possible for them to flourish and to produce and
rear large and thriving families, instead of fretting and pining as the
wilder captives would do. When we consider how exceedingly delicate and
easily disturbed yet all-important a function is that of maternity in
the continually breeding rabbit, we see that the tamest and the least
terrified would be the most successful mothers, and so would continually
be selected, although man cared nothing for the tameness in itself. The
tamest mothers would also be less liable to neglect or devour their
offspring, as rabbits commonly do when their young are handled too soon,
or even when merely frightened by mice, &c., or disturbed by changed
surroundings.

(3) We must remember the extraordinary fecundity of the rabbit and the
excessive amount of elimination that consequently takes place either
naturally or artificially. Where nature preserved only the wildest, man
has preserved the tamest. If there is any truth in the Darwinian theory,
this thorough and long-continued reversal of the selective process
_must_ have had a powerful effect. Why should it not be amply sufficient
to account for the tameness and mental degeneracy of the rabbit without
the aid of a factor which can readily be shown to be far weaker in its
normal action than either natural or artificial selection? Why may not
the tameness of the rabbit be transferred to the group of cases in
which Darwin holds that "habit has done nothing," and selection has done
all?

(4) If use-inheritance has tamed the rabbit, why are the bucks still so
mischievous and unruly? Why is the Angora breed the only one in which
the males show no desire to destroy the young? Why, too, should
use-inheritance be so much more powerful in the rabbit than with other
animals which are far more easily tamed in the first instance? Wild
young rabbits when domesticated "remain unconquerably wild," a