SHALL WE IMPROVE OUR RACE? 75 



SHALL WE IMPKOVE OUR EACE? 



BY gustave MICHAUD, D.SC. 



SAN JOSfi, COSTA RICA 



DUPJXG the last hundred years man has persistently and skilfully 

 practised artificial selection on domestic animals. He has thus 

 sometimes increased tenfold their value to him. Setting aside for 

 reproduction those cows only which gave the greatest amount of milk, 

 and those bulls, the mothers of which participated in the same char- 

 acteristic, milk-making animals were evolved out of the former indif- 

 ferent races of cows. The lean, hardy hog of the eighteenth century 

 has been transformed into a wonderful machine for the quick making 

 of fat. Selection practised for speed only has created races of horses 

 which can for a short time compete with a locomotive. 



While, in most cases of selection, man had in view the modification 

 of certain physical characteristics, it can not be said that this was 

 always his main purpose. The intellectual selection of animals has 

 also been practised to some extent. Breeders of hunting dogs are as 

 much concerned about what mothers and fathers thought and did in 

 given circumstances as about their shape and color. The results of 

 their work have been races the hunting propensities of which are quite 

 as strong and not altogether unlike the blind impulse which prompts 

 a New York clerk to spend one hundred dollars on hunting imple- 

 ments to get a few birds worth a few cents. The main difference 

 between the hunting dog and the hunting clerk is that the former is 

 mostly a recent product of artificial selection, while the latter is exclu- 

 sively a result of paleolithic natural selection : at a time when agricul- 

 ture was unknown, those families whose heads found no pleasure in 

 hunting were slowly but steadily and surely eliminated by hunger and 

 consequent diseases. The others remained. 



And the most notable mental transformation undergone by dogs is 

 not the developing of their hunting inclinations nor the creating of their 

 doorkeeping and watching propensities. The dog is to-day the only 

 animal which unmistakably loves his master, which exprepses intense 

 joy when shown some kindness or intense grief when told a harsh word. 

 During the the long prehistoric ages, domestic dogs were treated as 

 they are nowadays in savage tribes. Although each family kept a 

 number of them, very little food was ever given them. Hunger killed 

 every year many of them. Those which survived out of every genera- 

 tion were mostly those which had received from their masters some 

 food in time of famine, and they were of course the most affectionate 

 and demonstrative. 



