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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



... which was sketched in 1839, and copied in 1844, when the copy was read by Dr. Hooker, and its contents afterwards communicated to Sir Charles Lyell. The first Part is devoted to "The Variation of Organic Beings under Domestication and in their Natural State;" and the second chapter of that Part, from which we propose to read to the Society the extracts referred to, is headed, "On the Variation of Organic Beings in a state of Nature; on the Natural Means of Selection; on the ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... environmental and other accidents, which cannot be transmitted. Having excluded these sources of error the variations observed must be expressed in terms of the factors to which they are due before their significance can be understood. For example, numbers of the variations seen under domestication, and not a few witnessed in nature, are simply the consequence of some ingredient being in an unknown way omitted from the composition of the varying individual. The variation may on the contrary be due to the addition of some new element, but to prove that it is so is by no ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... one 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 ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... 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 ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... 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 influence ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... Darwinism, and a work denying that use and disuse produced any effect could not conceivably be called Darwinism. Mr. Herbert Spencer has recently collected many passages from The Origin of Species and from Animals and Plants under Domestication," {263} which show how largely, after all, use and disuse entered into Mr. Darwin's system, and we know that in his later years he attached still more importance to them. It was out of the question, therefore, that Mr. Wallace should categorically deny that their effects were inheritable. ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... 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

... Coral Reefs, but in the mean time I cannot leave this subject without touching upon a point of which great use has been made in recent discussions. I refer to the variability of Species as shown in domestication. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... you as a 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 ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers

... supplies which constitute the food of domestic animals are not 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 clothing, ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... pigeon-fancier, or "pomologist," must have been struck by the extreme modifiability or plasticity of those kinds of animals and plants which have been subjected to such artificial conditions as are imposed by domestication. Breeds of dogs are more different from one another than are the dog and the wolf; and the purely artificial races of pigeons, if their origin were unknown, would most assuredly be reckoned by naturalists as distinct species and ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... and it is worthy of encouragement. No woman need fear that she is aiding in any way the destruction of birds by wearing Ostrich plumes. There are many more of the birds {166} in the world to-day than there were when their domestication first began, and probably no wild African or Asiatic Ostriches are now shot or trapped for their plumes. The product seen in our stores all comes from strong, happy birds hatched and reared in captivity. Use of their ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... 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 ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... parasite, as is the case in wild animals. These have few diseases, the weak die, the resistant breed; they harbor, it is true, large numbers of parasites, but there is mutual adjustment between parasite and host. Diseases in animals greatly increase under the artificial conditions of domestication. Certain highly specialized breeds of cattle, as the Alderneys, are much more susceptible to tuberculosis than the less specialized. The high development of the variation which consists in a marked ability to produce milk fat ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... Chanticleer, as the 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 ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... R.M., and perhaps just a little 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

... to lose their lives in the business. The animals found on the island seem to be quite a distinctive breed from any other known race, and are noted for their intelligence, as well as for their docility, after proper domestication. They are not so large as those of Africa, but seem to be more highly prized in India. The exportation, as we learned, still goes on in behalf of the English government, sixteen hundred animals having thus been disposed of in ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... domiciled Europeans and Americans, the native has become a modified being. It is not in such places that a just estimate of character can be arrived at, even during many years' sojourn. The native must be studied by often-repeated casual residence in localities where his, or her, domestication is only "by law established," imposing little restraint upon natural inclinations, and where exotic notions have ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... about our voyage. You should have seen how they sympathized. They seemed half ready to give up their barge and follow us. But these canaletti are only gypsies semi-domesticated. The semi-domestication came out in rather a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's brow darkened. "Cependant," she began, and then stopped; and then began again by asking me ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said at this point that in America married life often proceeds too far in the domestication of the man, in his complete separation from male companionship, in a never-broken companionship between man and wife. This is distinctly unhealthy for the man, for he requires in his recreation the sense of freedom from restraint ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... favoured countries the second type of human society—the patriarchal, in which leadership becomes personal, and centred in a chief who exercises despotic authority. Patriarchal society grew out of the necessities of a pastoral existence; indeed, it was the discovery of the domestication of animals which gave rise to it. Among other interesting features which were developed are permanent marriage, slavery, and ancestor worship. There can be no doubt that the latter played an important part in binding the tribe into one organization, and ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

... Asiatic origin, but must often, in the grey of a winter morning, be conscious of their near relations flying at liberty across the sky. The geese and ducks have been remarkably transformed by the process of domestication, and a comparison between those of the farmyard and their kindred in the marshes should illustrate not only the relative value of most virtues, but also the all-importance of Aristotle's how, when and where. Strictly ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... [or, to coin a title, "Morganid"] which was published separately) in the late autumn of 1819, before he had left Venice (see his letter to Bankes, February 19, 1820, Letters, 1900, iv. 403). It is certain that it was finished at Ravenna during the first week of his "domestication" in the Palazzo Guiccioli (Letters to Murray, February 7, February 21, 1820). He took a deal of pains with his self-imposed task, "servilely translating stanza from stanza, and line from line, two octaves every ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... What was the ancient Fauna? Whether the earliest men were cotemporaneous with the latest of the extinct quadrupeds, has been already asked—the answer being doubtful. How far the earliest beasts of chase and domestication were the same as the present, is a fresh question. The sheep may reasonably be considered as a recent introduction; but with all the other domestic animals there are, perhaps, as good reasons for deriving them from native species as for considering them to be of foreign origin. The hog of the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... of the 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. Posole is a mixture ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... of mind which it implies would suggest that it reflects a 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 a ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl

... 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 hen canary lays her eggs four ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... my silence when I tell you that my sister, on the very eve of entering into a new house we have taken at Enfield, was surprised with an attack of one of her sad long illnesses, which deprive me of her society, tho' not of her domestication, for eight or nine weeks together. I see her, but it does her no good. But for this, we have the snuggest, most comfortable house, with every thing most compact and desirable. Colebrook is a wilderness. The Books, prints, etc., are come ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... race is carried, it seems scarcely possible to resist 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 is ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... usually 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, deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... the various deposits elsewhere has a complete skeleton been found, but 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

... 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 ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain

... 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 seem to have no appreciable effect towards their final, permanent domestication. That every new swarm contemplates migrating to the woods, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... certainly cannot account for the origination of the different branches, classes, or orders of organized beings. It in the main simply corresponds to artificial selection; in the latter case, man selects forms already produced by domestication, the latter affording sports and varieties due to change in the surroundings, that is, soil, climate, food, and other physical features, as well ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard



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



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