United States or Saint Barthélemy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
F. Cuvier has observed that all animals that readily enter into domestication, consider man as a member of their own society, and thus fulfil their instinct of association.
In the second place, some eminent naturalists believe that a long course of domestication tends to eliminate sterility in the successive generations of hybrids which were at first only slightly sterile; and if this be so, we surely ought not to expect to find sterility both appearing and disappearing under nearly the same conditions of life.
Domesticated productions, on the other hand, which, as shown by the mere fact of their domestication, were not originally highly sensitive to changes in their conditions of life, and which can now generally resist with undiminished fertility repeated changes of conditions, might be expected to produce varieties, which would be little liable to have their reproductive powers injuriously affected by the act of crossing with other varieties which had originated in a like manner.
"I am rejoiced to see you under my roof, my worthy friend," taking the rough hand of the old seaman between his own whiter and more delicate fingers, and shaking it with cordiality, "for this is being under my roof, while those town residences have less the air of domestication and familiarity.
She is indifferent to man, cares nothing for him unless he wins her by special and consistent kindness, and throughout her long domestication has kept her wild independence, and ability to forage for herself when turned loose, whether in forest or city street.
In the second place, the recovery of classical criticism in the Italian renaissance antedated by a hundred years the domestication of classical theory in England. Not until the seventeenth century, as has been shown, did rhetoric in England come again to mean what it had in classical antiquity.
The actual causes of variation are unknown. Mr. Darwin favors the opinion of the late Mr. Knight, the great philosopher of horticulture, that variability tinder domestication is somehow connected with excess of food.
In the wilderness and on the prairies, we find a general impression that cultivation and refinement must weaken the race. Not at all; they simply domesticate it. Domestication is not weakness. A strong hand does not become less muscular under a kid glove; and a man who is a hero in a red shirt will also be a hero in a white one.
On the other hand we have evidence that variability, when it has once come into play, does not cease under domestication for a very long period; nor do we know that it ever ceases, for new varieties are still occasionally produced by our oldest domesticated productions.
Again, it is said that there is no real analogy between the selection which takes place under domestication, by human influence, and any operation which can be effected by Nature, for man interferes intelligently.
Word Of The Day