We did say that
habits and dispositions were relative.
We believe that one group of habits can 'down' another group of habits--or instincts.
Again, after speaking of the frustration of some impulses which is involved in acquiring the habits of a civilized adult, he continues:
On the whole, I think we may conclude that habit, use, and disuse, have, in some cases, played a considerable part in the modification of the constitution, and of the structure of various organs; but that the effects of use and disuse have often been largely combined with, and sometimes overmastered by, the natural selection of innate differences.
We may imagine that the early progenitor of the ostrich had habits like those of a bustard, and that as natural selection increased in successive generations the size and weight of its body, its legs were used more, and its wings less, until they became incapable of flight.
In its structure it closely approaches the true shrikes, but in its habits may be compared to many birds.
The number, tameness, and disgusting habits of the carrion-feeding hawks of South America make them pre-eminently striking to any one accustomed only to the birds of Northern Europe.
These properties, of arts or policy, and dissimulation or closeness, are indeed
habits and faculties several, and to be distinguished.
She had regained her riding habit and calash from the grisly phantom, and was, in all respects, the lovely woman who had been sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn.
They perplex their judgments by a most undue attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits, disposition, and other trifles which concern nobody but the lady herself.
As to that, if I wanted evidence of a fact, which is abundantly apparent by the habits of the animal, I have the word of Ishmael himself.
Why should she not study the habits of any animal, even though it were a rhinoceros?
