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Domestication   /dəmˌɛstəkˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Domestication

noun
1.
Adaptation to intimate association with human beings.
2.
The attribute of having been domesticated.  Synonym: tameness.
3.
Accommodation to domestic life.






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"Domestication" Quotes from Famous Books



... domestication of the horse, one of the greatest achievements of man in the animal kingdom, was not the work of a day; but like all other great accomplishments, was brought about by a gradual process of discoveries and experiments. He first subdued the more subordinate animals, ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid

... agriculture in a crude sort of way. It is my opinion that this is one of the earliest steps from savagery to civilization. The taming of wild beasts and their domestication follows. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... class of facts which tell so immensely in favour of natural selection as an important cause of organic evolution, are those of domestication. The art of the horticulturist, the fancier, the cattle-breeder, &c., consists in producing greater and greater deviations from a given wild type of plant or animal, in any particular direction that may be desired for purposes either of use or of beauty. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... another, by which several of them are generally lame. When much caressed and well fed, they become quite familiar and domestic: but this mode of treatment does not improve their qualities as animals of draught. Being desirous of ascertaining whether these dogs are wolves in a state of domestication, a question which we understood to have been the subject of some speculation, Mr. Skeoch, at my request, made a skeleton of each, when the number of all the vertebrae was found to be the same in both,[010] and to correspond with the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... the variations of animals under domestication, the particular specimens selected being chiefly the familiar pigeon, in its various forms, and the jungle-fowl with its multiform ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... to England it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My first note-book was opened in July 1837. I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... trimmed down more or less according to its degree of savageness, can then inhabit the state, and every good, when sufficiently transfigured, can be found again in the general ideal. The factors may indeed often be unrecognisable in the result, so much does the process of domestication transform them; but the interests that animated them survive this discipline and the new purpose is really esteemed; else the ideal would have no moral force. An ideal representing no living interest would be irrelevant to practice, just as a conception of reality would be irrelevant to perception ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... look at him sitting there, as unresponsive to the spell as the cup from which he was sipping its third replenishment of tea, would have explained his domestication in that household;—the necessity, in fact, for domesticating among them some one who was always buoyantly upon the surface, whose talk, in comfortably rounded sentences, flowed along with a mild approximation to wit, whose sentiments were never barbed with passion;—who was, to sum him ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... I readily concur with you in supposing that house-doves are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many reasons. In the first place, the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common house-dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which generally enlarges the breed. Again, these two remarkable black spots on the remiges of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so characteristic of the species, would not, one should think, be totally lost by its being reclaimed; but would often break out among its descendants. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... nest on the branches, and by turns makes its visits to the dwellings of the natives, frequenting the ceilings in preference to the lower parts of houses. Here it is incessantly followed by the rat-snake[2], whose domestication is encouraged by the native servants, in consideration of its services in destroying vermin. I had one day an opportunity of surprising a snake which had just seized on a rat of this description, and of covering it suddenly with a glass shade, before it ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... men are born with an even wider variety of tendencies to act than animals, these are much more plastic and modifiable, more susceptible of training, and much more in need of it than those of the sub-human forms. Even among animals under conditions of domestication, instinct tends largely to be replaced by habitual or acquired modes of behavior. The human being, born with a nervous system and a brain in extremely unformed and plastic condition, is so susceptible ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... necessary to go as far as Guiana and Brazil to find instances of the domestication of wild fowl by aborigines. Among our North American Indians it was a by no means uncommon practice to capture and tame birds. Roger Williams, for instance, speaks of the New England Indians keeping tame hawks about their dwellings "to keep the little birds ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw

... implied. Practically every farm in the United States keeps domestic animals, either for their labor or their products, and nearly every household in both city and country keeps one or more animals for companionship. The domestication of animals has been a prime factor in the civilization of the human race by furnishing man with motive force by which he has been able to increase his productive power; by giving him a larger, better and more regular food supply; and by furnishing the materials for ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... those of this part of the world in any respect. And the inhabitants of the islands of the South-Sea had neither the use of iron tools nor of the bow, nor of wheels, nor of spinning, nor had learned to coagulate milk, or to boil water, though the domestication of fire seems to have been the first great discovery that distinguished mankind from the bestial inhabitants ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... the conclusion that some form of family relationship is coeval with human life. Widely as social arrangements differ in detail among savage peoples, arbitrary promiscuity can nowhere be detected. Certain laws of domestication have been invariably found to exist, based upon definite social and moral restrictions universally acknowledged and rigidly enforced. Two primitive conditions are present wherever man is found—the tribe and the family. If the family is never present without the tribe, the tribe ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... The Watchman early in 1796. The proposition that Lloyd should live with Coleridge and become in a way his pupil was agreed to by his parents, and in September he accompanied the philosopher to Nether Stowey a day or so after David Hartley's birth, all eager to begin domestication and tutelage. Lloyd was a sensitive, delicate youth, with an acute power of analysis and considerable grasp of metaphysical ideas. No connection ever began more amiably. He was, I might add, by only two days ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... inborn dexterity her formidable claws. She prefers nocturnal excursions and sociabilities, having eyes which make it safe to be venturesome in the dark. She has certain vocal expressions of her emotions, which man in vain attempts to eradicate with all the agencies of domestication. She has special arts to attract her mate, and he in turn is able to charm her with songs which charm nobody else. And so ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... boat and followed them, playing with the blade, its gambols resembling that of a kitten. He pointed out to Helen the mild expression of the creature's face and assured her that all this tribe were harmless animals, and susceptible of domestication. The cub swam up to the boat quite fearlessly, and he touched its head gently; he encouraged her to do the like, but she shrank from its contact. They were now close ashore, and Hazel, throwing out his anchor in two feet of water, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... forms, in accordance with the conditions of the several regions inhabited by man. Its result was to subdue nature to the use and benefit of mankind, and the methods, in the tropical localities of original man, consisted in the reduction of animals to the domestic state and a similar domestication of food plants. In other words, one of its early stages was the development of the herding habit, while a far more important one was that of the appearance of the agricultural industries. In Europe a third and still more vigorous ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... in spite of domestication and training, Nature in her great moments returns to the primitive and instinctive! My brown cow, never having had anything but the kindest treatment, is as gentle an animal as could be imagined, but she had ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... common fowl, and much used for food. Both this bird and the little parrot regularly fly off with flocks of their wild fellows, but always come back afterward to the house. This was a most interesting example of an intermediate stage between true wildness and domestication. There was little doing throughout the day. Heat, black-flies, and sunlight all made it impossible to sleep; but we took a bath in the running brook, and skinned some birds, and tasted posole for the first time. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... as sedulously used, to bow down their minds to it? If it had been made the object of the life of every young plebeian to find personal favour in the eyes of some patrician, of every young serf with some seigneur; if domestication with him, and a share of his personal affections, had been held out as the prize which they all should look out for, the most gifted and aspiring being able to reckon on the most desirable prizes; and ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... eyes. The pensive travellers might indeed hear the screams of the raven, as if lamenting the decay of the carnage on which he had been gorged; and now and then the plaintive howl of some dog, deprived of his home and master; but no sounds which argued either labour or domestication of ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... bent on looking; his eyes had occupation enough in Biddy's own agreeable aspect, which was full of a rare element of domestication and responsibility. Though she had, stretching her bravery, taken possession of her brother's quarters, she struck her visitor as more at home and more herself than he had ever seen her. It was the first time she ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... of musmons had also increased, and several lambs already bleated in the sheds, to the great delight of Neb and Herbert, who had each their favorite among these newcomers. An attempt was also made for the domestication of the peccaries, which succeeded well. A sty was constructed under the poultry-yard, and soon contained several young ones in the way to become civilized, that is to say, to become fat under Neb's care. Master Jup, entrusted with carrying them their daily nourishment, leavings from the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... I found these gazelles would eat with much zest roses that had been plentifully sprinkled with their extract, the goolabee paanee, so greatly in request. The gazelle is also very fond of crisply-toasted bread, a taste which must be acquired in domestication. It is a courageous animal, and will come readily to the assault, butting fiercely when attacked. In taking a gazelle away from Arabia, it should be carefully guarded against cold and damp, and if not provided with water-proof covering to its feet, would ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... so extraordinarily great in proportion to the parent birds, and likewise from the state of the ovarium of the hen, that she may in the course of the season lay a large number, yet the time required must be very long. Azara states that a female in a state of domestication laid seventeen eggs, each at the interval of three days one from another. (5/14. Azara volume 4 page 173.) If the hen was obliged to hatch her own eggs, before the last was laid the first probably would be addled; but if each laid a few eggs at successive periods, in different ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Increase (same) Complex Relations of All Animals and Plants to Each Other in the Struggle for Existence (same) Of Natural Selection: or the Survival of the Fittest (same) Progressive Change Compared with Independent Creation (same) Creative Design ('Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication') Origin of the Human Species ('The Descent ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... carried one of these animals to California. The dog lifted up his voice on the waters very often, and received a great deal of rope's ending in consequence. At San Francisco Mr. Covert took him home, and attempted his domestication. 'Norcum,' (for that was the brute's name,) created an enmity between Covert and all who lived within hearing distance, and many were the threats of canicide. Covert used to rise two or three times every night and argue, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... said by naturalists," answered the Judge, "that man comprehends, within himself, the peculiarities of all inferior animals. Now, there are some capable of domestication, while others are irreclaimable. You may tame the horse, but not the tiger. The wild element controls the one, and is controllable in the other. In my opinion, this wild element so predominates in the Indian as to make him incapable of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... poetry in particular, could not but derive some additional and important light. It would in its immediate effects furnish a torch of guidance to the philosophical critic; and ultimately to the poet himself. In energetic minds, truth soon changes by domestication into power; and from directing in the discrimination and appraisal of the product, becomes influencive in the production. To admire on principle, is the only way to imitate ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... who was thus rudely despoiling them, I must state that the wild Australian bee is stingless. It is a harmless little insect, not much larger than the common house-fly, and though it produces abundance of honey and wax, it has not been subjected to domestication, and from its diminutive proportions and its habit of building on very high trees, probably never will be. The English bee has been most successfully introduced into Queensland; and many of the farms in the ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and will be probably better off in his state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state. We treat our horses, dogs, cattle and sheep, on the whole, with great kindness, we give them whatever experience teaches us to be ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... late, and waited for Mme. de Nucingen, who came about noon to breakfast with him. Youth snatches eagerly at these rosy moments of happiness, and Eugene had almost forgotten Goriot's existence. The pretty things that surrounded him were growing familiar; this domestication in itself was one long festival for him, and Mme. de Nucingen was there to glorify it all by her presence. It was four o'clock before they thought of Goriot, and of how he had looked forward to the new life in that house. Eugene said that the old man ought to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... Working at "Variation under Domestication." Papers on Yellow Rain, the Pampas, and on Cirripedes. A review of Bates' paper on Mimetic Butterflies. Severe illness ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... mar those hills, and he suffers. How has the farmer planted himself in his fields; builded himself into his stone walls, and evoked the sympathy of the hills by his struggle! This home feeling, this domestication of nature, is important to the observer. This is the bird-lime with which he catches the bird; this is the private door that admits him behind the scenes. This is one source of Gilbert White's charm, and of the charm of ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... thoroughly will find full satisfaction in an enjoyment devoid alike of envy or the desire of possession He is to adore all beautiful objects with a Platonic fervour to which the idea of acquisition and domestication is repugnant. Before going into this lofty argument, I should perhaps explain the collection of my scornful friend. He would have said: "I see that as I put X—— in his proper place, you look at my pictures and smile. You have rightly ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... which he thought might lead to the answer he sought. In casting about for facts he had soon discovered that the most available field for observation lay among domesticated animals, whose numerous variations within specific lines are familiar to every one. Thus under domestication creatures so tangibly different as a mastiff and a terrier have sprung from a common stock. So have the Shetland pony, the thoroughbred, and the draught-horse. In short, there is no domesticated animal that has not developed varieties deviating more or less widely ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... every reason for believing that the domestication of the wild duck is of quite recent date. The attempt having succeeded, it was wished to follow it up by the naturalisation in the poultry-yard of two other sorts of aquatic birds, namely, the sheldrake (tadorna) ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... of years, a series of volumes in which some of his observations and conclusions were worked out in fuller detail. His books on the fertilization of orchids, on the movements and habits of climbing plants, on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, on the effects of cross-and self-fertilization in the vegetable kingdom, on the different forms of flowers on plants of the same species, were mainly based on his own quiet work in the greenhouse and garden at Down. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... all she is showing either a reluctance or an inability to nurse them. Small families are becoming the rule, especially among the better to do. On the other hand, the history of the home is the gradual domestication of the man, his greater devotion to the children and to his wife. The increase in divorce has its roots in social issues too big to be discussed with profit here, but perhaps the principal ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... did this vaunting brother need? And with the most favorable supposition about the hypothetic mother, Deronda shrank from the image of a first meeting between her and Mirah, and still more from the idea of Mirah's domestication with this family. He took refuge in disbelief. To find an Ezra Cohen when the name was running in your head was no more extraordinary than to find a Josiah Smith under like circumstances; and as to the coincidence ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... not? For they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strewn along the ground. The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the same species. Now they are acknowledged to be, not only distinct, but very different in many respects. The Asiatic, or, as it is more frequently called, the "Indian" elephant is the larger of the two; but it is possible that domestication may have produced a larger kind, as is the rule with many animals. The African species exists only in a wild state; and it would appear that individuals of this kind have been measured having the dimensions of the largest of the wild ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... his misspent or well-spent college life; for the money which might have gone for shingles and joists and more provender, had in part been spent on books describing the fauna of the earth and the distribution of species on its surface. Some had gone for treatises on animals under domestication, while his own animals under domestication were allowed to go poorly fed and worse housed. He had had the theory; they had had the practice. But they apprehended nothing of all this. How many tragedies of evil passion brutes escape by not understanding their owners! ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... to gather seeds from selected plants and so furnish his own supply. It must be borne in mind, however, that plants can be improved by cross breeding and that by keeping a variety too long on the same ground its quality deteriorates, and the plant tends to revert to the type natural to it before domestication. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... like some of the more probable adventures of Baron Munchausen. The newer stories were evidently true to the smallest detail, the earlier ones had altered somewhat in repetition, as plants and animals vary under domestication. ...
— When William Came • Saki

... horse in Europe except on the hypothesis of continuous land communication between the two continents, seeing that it is certain that the horse existed in a wild state in Europe and Asia before his domestication by man, which may be traced back almost to the stone age. Cattle and sheep as we now know them have an equally remote ancestry. Darwin finds domesticated cattle in Europe in the earliest part of the stone age, having long before developed out ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... applied to an end, absolutely indispensable to any even tolerable system of discipline, and yet absolutely unattainable upon any commensurate scale in any other university of Europe. They are applied to the personal settlement and domestication of the students within the gates and walls of that college to whose discipline they are amenable. Everywhere else the young men live where they please and as they please; necessarily distributed amongst the towns- people; in any case, therefore, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... where they have settled, so that the hairy caterpillars, which sparrows do not eat and which used to be extensively consumed by other birds, are now greatly on the increase, probably the only creatures, at present, enjoying the domestication of the sparrow in this country.... I have also to remark that the sparrows here betray much less pugnacity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... rise to varieties and races different from what before existed. But there are limits to such modifications, as in the different kind and breed of dogs; and no organized beings can, by the mere working of natural causes, be made to pass from the type of one species to that of another. A wolf by domestication, for example, can never become a dog, nor the ourang-outang by the force of external circumstances be brought within the circle ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... protect from cold. The methods of procuring food in primitive times. The variety of food was constantly increased. The food-supply was increased by inventions. The discovery and use of fire. Cooking added to the economy of the food-supply. The domestication of animals. The beginnings of agriculture were very meagre. The manufacture of clothing. Primitive shelters and houses. Discovery and use of metals. Transportation as a means of economic development. Trade, or exchange of goods. The struggle ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... dwelling-place, abode, dwelling, hearth, hearthstone; habitat, seat; asylum, retreat. Associated Words: domestic, domesticate, domesticity, domestication, inhabitativeness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... totemic significance. I conclude from this, therefore, that the search for the origin of totemism must be made from the women's side of the social group. Such a search would lead straight to the industrialism of early woman, from which originated the domestication of animals, the cultivation of fruits and cereals, and the appropriation of such trees and shrubs as were necessary to primitive economics.[361] The close and intimate relationship with human life which such animals, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... which possess "carrying" power. It undoubtedly gave him his original popularity, and we need not despise it now, inasmuch as it makes less tedious the task of ascertaining and justifying his true place in the further "domestication"—if only in domesticities too often mean and grimy—of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... few generations was sufficient to obliterate even the recollection of such knowledge. "And," says Prescott,[6] "he might well doubt, whether the wild, uncouth monsters, whom he occasionally saw bounding with such fury over the distant plains, were capable of domestication, like the meek animals which he had left grazing in the green pastures of Asia." To this leading distinction—the adoption and neglect of pastoral habits—may be referred most of the diversities among ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... only — a very significant fact — the bones on which had been the greater amount of flesh. The absence of any remains of the dog, so indispensable an animal in the keeping of flocks, is yet another proof that domestication was ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... pigs, and knew all about them,"—so we were brought up among cows and cabbages; and the lowing of cattle, the cackling of hens, and the cooing of pigeons were sounds native and pleasant to our ears. So "Variation under Domestication" dealt with familiar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced "Variation under Nature," which seemed likely enough. Then follows "Struggle for Existence,"—a principle which we experimentally know to be true and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... very bright contribution to the aspect of animal nature and domestication in the Far East. Is full of keen observation, and lightened by a very pleasant sense of humour." (Topics of ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready

... almost illimitable variability is the usual result of domestication and cultivation, with the same part or organ varying in different individuals in different or even in directly opposite ways; and as the same variation, if strongly pronounced, usually recurs only after long intervals of time, any particular variation ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... interesting and important to note that Israel's history was in most respects like that of other growing nations. In the beginning pastoral society and tribal government develop among savages primarily through the domestication of animals. The young of the animals slain in the hunt are kept first as pets: then, when as a result of the thriftless nature of the savages supplies at times become scarce, the pets are slain for ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks

... Steps towards the Domestication of Animals (Journal of Ethnological Society); 1871: Gregariousness in Cattle and in Men (Macmillan's Magazine); 1872: Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer (Fortnightly Review); 1873: Relative Supplies from Town and Country Families to the Population ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... terms on the offspring from intercrossed varieties being superior to either parent-form, no precise measurements have been given (1/8. A summary of these statements, with references, may be found in my 'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication' chapter 17 2nd edition 1875 volume 2 page 109.); and I have met with no observations on the effects of crossing and self-fertilising the individuals of the same variety. Moreover, experiments of this kind require so much time—mine having been continued during eleven years—that ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... wild state the utility of the horns of cattle as weapons of offense and defense is apparent, but with domestication of cattle and their confinement the presence of horns constitutes a menace to the safety of their companions. Horned cattle frequently inflict with their horns painful and serious injuries to others. Deaths as a result of such injuries are ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... variegated as cats, which in the woods are all of the uniformly-streaked tabby—the males inclining to the brown shade—the females to blue among them;—but being bred down, become tortoise-shell, and red, and every variety of colour, which domestication alone can bestow. ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... a disease to which the Horse, from his state of domestication, is frequently subject. The Farriers have termed it the Grease. It is an inflammation and swelling in the heel, from which issues matter possessing properties of a very peculiar kind, which seems capable of generating a disease in the Human Body (after it has undergone the modification ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner

... far-reaching toll of the bell-bird sounds above the screaming and chattering of parrots and toucans in the Brazilian forest. A fine sound, which in spite of many changes of climate and long centuries of domestication still preserves that forest-born character of wildness, which gives so great a charm to the language of many woodland gallinaceous birds. As we have seen, it is variable, and in some artificial varieties has been suffered to degenerate into sounds harsh and disagreeable; yet it is plain that an ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... hunted after, until the whole wild race was quite destroyed. In Italy, therefore, we find the first tame canaries, and here they are still reared in great numbers. Their natural colour is grey, which merges into green beneath, almost resembling the colours of the linnet; but by means of domestication, climate, and being bred with other birds, canaries may now be met with of a great variety of colours. But perhaps there is none more beautiful than the golden-yellow, with blackish-grey head and tail. The ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... his stall, and goes snorting around the barnyard, tossing everybody within reach of his horns. A bull so employed might well consider that he was offering the world a fine display of aggressive individuality, whereas he had in truth been behaving after the manner of all bulls from the dawn of domestication. No doubt he is quite capable of being a dangerous customer, in case he can reach anybody with his horns; but on the other hand how meekly can he be led back into the stall by the simple device of attaching a ring to ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... Cheever was going the normal course. It had lost the charm of the wild and wicked—through familiarity; and it was tending to domestication, as all such moods do if nothing interrupts them. There are all sorts of endings to such illicit relations: most of them end with the mutual treachery of two fickle creatures; some of them end with bitter grief for one or the other or both; some of them end in crime, or at least disgrace; and some ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... family; he reads important botanical papers before the Linnean Society; publishes the "Fertilisation of Orchids," 1862; analysis of the book; Darwin receives Copley Medal of Royal Society, 1864; "Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants," 1865; "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," 1868; the hypothesis of ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... to attain to this primitive language! How many centuries more to the discovery of the most necessary arts, the use of fire, the fabrication of "hatches of silex and jade", the melting and refining of metals, the domestication of animals, the production and modification of edible plants, the formation of early civilized and durable communities, the discovery of writing, figures and astronomical periods.[3118] Only after a dawn of vast and infinite length do we see in Chaldea and in China the commencement of an ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... sense that each developed along but few lines. Of the numberless years that covered these early stages we have no record. They were the years that saw such extraordinary discoveries and inventions as fire, and the wheel, and the bow, and the domestication of animals. So local were these inventions that at the present day there yet linger savage tribes, still fixed in the half-bestial life of an infinitely remote past, who know none of them except fire—and the discovery ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... the usages of daily life, even in conservative Egypt. We look almost in vain for herds of gazelles upon the walls of the Theban tombs, for the reason that these animals, in Ramesside times, had ceased to be bred in a state of domestication. The horse, on the other hand, had been imported into the valley of the Nile, and is depicted pawing the ground where formerly the gazelle was seen cropping the pasturage. The trades are also more numerous and complicated; the workmen's tools are more elaborate; the actions of ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... collocation; packing, lading; establishment, settlement, installation; fixation; insertion &c. 300. habitat, environment, surroundings (situation) 183; circumjacence &c. 227[obs3]. anchorage, mooring, encampment. plantation, colony, settlement, cantonment; colonization, domestication, situation; habitation &c. (abode) 189; cohabitation; "a local habitation and a name" [Midsummer Night's Dream]; endenization[obs3], naturalization. V. place, situate, locate, localize, make a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the making of them, together with the performance of sundry odd jobs in the garden, kept me busy for nearly a month, during which I was afforded ample opportunity to note the progress which Billy was making in the domestication of his cat. The beast was growing fast, and it was also developing certain markings which tended to confirm my original suspicion that it was some species of leopard, or panther, a circumstance that not only occasioned me considerable uneasiness but also led me to impart my fears to Billy, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... of his domestication with his wife at Wellwood Abbey, Sir Henry Wellwood had intended, had longed, to commence his little system of tender remonstrance; but the slightest insinuation of a difference of opinion was sufficient to fan the embers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various

... Utility, such as pottery, building, agriculture and the domestication of animals, and those of Pleasure, such as music, painting and sculpture, must come in for a full share of the ethnologist's attention. They represent, however, stadia of culture rather than national character. They influence the latter materially ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton

... my knowledge, has ever seen the bees house-hunting in the woods. Yet there can be no doubt that they look up new quarters either before or on the day the swarm issues. For all bees are wild bees and incapable of domestication; that is, the instinct to go back to nature and take up again their wild abodes in the trees is never eradicated. Years upon years of life in the apiary seems to have no appreciable effect towards their final, permanent domestication. That every new swarm contemplates migrating to the woods, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... other savage races), of attuning his voice to sounds which are pleasing to his ears. In support of this proposition I instance the fact of the dog's acquired habit of barking, which has been developed since his domestication. In his wild ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... Magpie, the Jay has considerable talent for mimicry, and in a state of domestication may be taught to articulate words like a Parrot. At certain times I have heard this bird utter a few notes resembling the tinkle of a bell, and which, if syllabled, might form such a word as dilly-lily; but it is not a musical strain. Indeed, there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... domestication under his own roof, the old gentleman's liking for her had grown tenfold strong; he had familiarized himself with the idea of counting her one of his own flock. But, the child ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... by domestication is a branch of philosophic inquiry which we may almost say has been created by Darwin; but the geographical results of these modifications do not appear to have yet been made a subject of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... journalism. Why, what put it into your head that you could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you recommend the domestication of the polecat on account of its playfulness and its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played to them was superfluous—entirely superfluous. Nothing disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever about music. Ah, heaven ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... of Atlantis, Plato tells us, "had been cultivated during many ages by many generations of kings." If, as we believe, agriculture, the domestication of the horse, ox, sheep, goat, and bog, and the discovery or development of wheat, oats, rye, and barley originated in this region, then this language of Plato in reference to "the many ages, and the successive generations of kings," ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... to wool. Henceforth he became economical with his beasts, and moved about in order to procure for them abundance of grass and water. He was still always hunting and fighting; but there were now accessory industries, and he was especially occupied in the domestication of animals. Then it happened that he acquired a taste for a graminaceous grain—corn. To seek the blades one by one is not a very fruitful labour, and decidedly troublesome. Man collected a supply ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... time when man's mind was preoccupied with wild beasts, and when the alliances and friendships, which he would value in life, might be found in that sphere. There is much plausibility in the view put forward by M. Salomon Reinach, that the domestication of animals itself implies a totemistic habit of thought, and the consequent protection of these animals by means of taboos from harm and death. It may well be that, after all, the usefulness of domestic animals from a material point of view was only ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl

... throng, and out of the need which people seem to feel everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our greatest delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... habits, would greatly facilitate the training of Gypsies to salutary discipline and subordination; and the associations it provided for them out of school hours, being under the superintendence of a regular family, would, in an especial manner, be favorable to their domestication. ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... be too generous to the mammal mind. For in the cases we have just mentioned, part of man's mind has, so to speak, got into the animal's. On the other hand, when we study rabbits and guinea-pigs, we are apt to be too stingy, for these rodents are under the average of mammals, and those that live in domestication illustrate the stupefying effect of a too sheltered life. The same applies to domesticated sheep contrasted with wild sheep, or even with their own lambs. If we are to form a sound judgment on the intelligence of mammals we ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... and lateral, at the side of the head, in situation. The fleece of the sheep is of two sorts, either short and harsh, or soft and woolly; the wool always preponderating in an exact ratio to the care, attention, and amount of domestication bestowed on the animal. The generic peculiarities of the sheep are the triangular and spiral form of the horns, always larger in the male when present, but absent in the most cultivated species; having sinuses at the base of all the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... touch them; for if they had escaped it was only to meet a new danger. Mr. Moreen appealed to him, on every precedent, as a man of the world; but his wife had recourse, for the first time since his domestication with them, to a fine hauteur, reminding him that a devoted mother, with her child, had arts that protected her against ...
— The Pupil • Henry James

... of Animals and Plants under Domestication. By Charles Darwin. Second edition. 2 vols. ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones

... project forward with an almost horizontal curve, while the straight tusks of the mooknas point directly downwards. Nearly a dozen varieties or breeds are thus established among the elephants of India that are held in a state of domestication. ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... of the canine teeth in the adult would seem to indicate a carnivorous propensity; but in no state save that of domestication do they manifest it. At first they reject flesh, but easily acquire a fondness for it. The canines are early developed, and evidently designed to act the important part of weapons of defence. When in contact with man almost the first effort ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... imago in a state of perfect bliss? From the evolutional point of view the question has interest; and its obvious answer was suggested to me by the history of those silkworms,—which have been domesticated for only a few thousand years. Consider the result of our celestial domestication for—let us say—several millions of years: I mean the final consequence, to the wishers, of being able to gratify every wish ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... afterwards explain the principles by which fossil bones may be identified. I shall give a rapid sketch of new species discovered by the application of these principles. I shall then show how far these varieties may extend, owing to the influence of the climate and domestication. I shall then conceive myself justified in concluding that the more considerable differences which I have discovered are the results of very important catastrophes. Afterwards I shall explain the peculiar influence which my researches should exercise on the received opinions ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... new species now intends to state no more than he actually knows; as, for example, that the differences on which he founds the specific character are constant in individuals of both sexes, so far as observation has reached; and that they are not due to domestication or to artificially superinduced external circumstances, or to any outward influence within his cognizance; that the species is wild, or is such as ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... The difficulties of domestication at St. Johnswort had not been misrepresented by the late proprietor, Hewson found, when he went to take possession of his estate. He thought it right in engaging servants to say openly that the place had the reputation of being haunted, and if he had not thought it ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... singular part of Toby's domestication was his exclusive loyalty to a single person. He had but one intimate friend, and to him his loyalty was intense. He would tolerate the presence of other members of the household, but when strangers appeared he was decidedly offish, and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... nature faker and put you down for membership in the Ananias Club. Recall what he did to Ernest Seton-Thompson and to that minister in Stamford, Connecticut. Remember how he crossed swords with Mr. Scully touching the alleged dangerous nature of the ostrich and the early domestication of the peacock. So far as I know, the bittern thing has no voice at all. His real stunt is as follows. He puts his beak down into the swamp, in search of insects and snails or other marine life—est-ce que je sais?—and drawing in the bog-water through holes in his beak, makes a booming sound ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... her confinement in the neighbourhood of Aix, the child left to the care of the nurse, the journey to Munich to find the false Louise Duval was no more. The documents obtained through the agency of her easy-tempered kinsman, the late Marquis de Rochebriant, and her subsequent domestication in the house of the von Rudesheims,—all this it is needless to do more here than briefly recapitulate. The letter then went on: "While thus kindly treated by the family with whom nominally a governess, I was on the terms of a friend with Signor Ludovico Cicogna, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... through which all nations pass,—it appears to be more than this,—as if the great black race in passing up the steps of human culture gave the world, not only the Iron Age, the cultivation of the soil, and the domestication of animals, but also, in peculiar emphasis, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois



Words linked to "Domestication" :   accommodation, flexibility, adaptation, tractableness, tamed, tractability, adjustment, adaption, wildness, fitting, tame



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