426 THE CAUSES OF THE xi 



however, tell you that it is quite different. The 

 wild Horse of Asia is said to be of a dun colour, 

 with a largish head, and a great many other pe- 

 culiarities ; while the best authorities on the wild 

 Horses of South America tell you that there is no 

 similarity between their wild Horses and those of 

 Asia Minor ; the cut of their heads is very differ- 

 ent, and they are commonly chestnut or bay- 

 coloured. It is quite clear, therefore, that as by 

 these facts there ought to have been two primitive 

 stocks, they go for nothing in support of the as- 

 sumption that races recur to one primitive stock, 

 and so far as this evidence is concerned, it falls to 

 the ground. 



Suppose for a moment that it were so, and 

 that domesticated races, when turned wild, did 

 return to some common condition, I cannot see 

 that this would prove much more than that simi- 

 lar conditions are likely to produce similar results ; 

 and that when you take back domesticated ani- 

 mals into what we call natural conditions, you do 

 exactly the same thing as if you carefully undid 

 all the work you had gone through, for the pur- 

 pose of bringing the animal from its wild to its 

 domesticated state. I do not see anything very 

 wonderful in the fact, if it took all that trouble to 

 get it from a wild state, that it should go back in- 

 to its original state as soon as you removed the 

 conditions which produced the variation to the 

 domesticated form. There is an important fact, 



