Treating of domesticated rabbits, he says:—“the want of exercise has
apparently modified the proportional length of the limbs in
comparison with the body” (p. 116). “We thus see that the most
important and complicated organ [the brain] in the whole
organization is subject to the law of decrease in size from disuse”
(p. 129). He remarks that in birds of the oceanic islands “not
persecuted by any enemies, the reduction of their wings has probably
been caused by gradual disuse.” After comparing one of these, the
water-hen of Tristan d'Acunha, with the European water-hen, and
showing that all the bones concerned in flight are smaller, he
adds—“Hence in the skeleton of this natural species nearly the same
changes have occurred, only carried a little further, as with our
domestic ducks, and in this latter case I presume no one will
dispute that they have resulted from the lessened use of the wings
and the increased use of the legs” (pp. 286-7). “As with other
long-domesticated animals, the instincts of the silk-moth have
suffered. The caterpillars, when placed on a mulberry-tree, often
commit the strange mistake of devouring the base of the leaf on
which they are feeding, and consequently fall down; but they are
capable, according to M. Robinet, of again crawling up the trunk.
Even this capacity sometimes fails, for M. Martins placed some
caterpillars on a tree, and those which fell were not able to
remount and perished of hunger; they were even incapable of passing
from leaf to leaf” (p. 304).
Here are some instances of like meaning from volume ii.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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