296 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



domestication that in time they become hardly re- 

 cognizable. They undergo so much change that 

 botanists do not at all like describing domesticated 

 varieties. Wheat itself is an example. Where can 

 wheat be found as a wild plant, unless it have escaped 

 from some neighbouring cultivation ? Where are our 

 cauliflowers, our lettuces, to be found wild, with the same 

 characters as they possess in our kitchen gardens ? 



" The same applies to our domesticated breeds of 

 animals. What a variety of breeds has not man pro- 

 duced among fowls and pigeons, of which we can find 

 no undomesticated examples ! " * 



The foregoing remarks on the effects of domestication 

 seem to have been inspired by those given p. 123 and 

 pp. 168, 169 of this volume, f 



"Some, doubtless, have changed less than others, 

 owing to their having undergone a less protracted 

 domestication, and a less degree of change in climate ; 

 nevertheless, though our ducks and geese, for example, 

 are of the same type as their wild progenitors, they 

 have lost the power of long and sustained flight, and 

 have become in other respects considerably modified. J 



" A bird, after having been kept five or six years in 

 a cage, cannot on being liberated fly like its brethren 

 which have been always free. Such a change in a 

 single lifetime has not effected any transmissible modi- 

 fication of type ; but captivity, continued during many 



* 'Phil. Zool./tom. i. p.228. 



t See Buffon, ' Hist. Nat./ torn. T. pp. 196, 197, and Supp. torn. v. 

 pp. 250-253. 

 \ 'Phil. Zool./tom. i.p.229. 



