SELECTION 179 



ing; as when the highly individualized races 

 of pigeon sink back to the comparative 

 uniformity of the ancestral rock-dove. Yet 

 from this apparent regression, really a pro- 

 found and intimate panmixis, a thorough- 

 going cross-fertilization, who shall say what 

 new variations may arise, what new selections 

 also even what evolving guidance of these? 

 EUGENICS AS A RENEWAL OF EVOLUTION. 

 Thus we return to man as transformist, a 

 discussion already opened in Chapter II, 

 but this time appearing in a fresh perspec- 

 tive. It is admitted by all inquirers into 

 the origins of civilization on one hand, into 

 the origins of cultivated plants and of 

 domesticated animals on the other, that 

 practically all these familiar and indispen- 

 sable companions of man are of prehistoric 

 origin, and have risen along with him, as he 

 with them. But now the corollary of this: 

 imagine the immensity not only of patient 

 labour, but of selective skill, which are com- 

 prised within the steps from wild grasses to 

 cereals, from crab-apple and wild olive to the 

 vast and fruitful groves which must assur- 

 edly have covered the prehistoric cultivation 

 terraces of old, stretching as these did 

 throughout the Mediterranean region from 

 Portugal to Syria thence through Asia 

 Minor to Persia, to Korea itself. One has 



