SO MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 



69. Although the numerous examples furnished by the Vegetable Kingdom 

 may seem to have but a remote bearing on the question, it would still be 

 wrong to pass them by without notice ; since the general principles already 

 noticed are recognized by Botanists, as serving for the discrimination or iden- 

 tification of species of Plants ; to which they apply equally with Animals. 

 We have abundant evidence, in the case of our cultivated fruits and flowers, 

 of the origination of new and well-marked varieties from stocks originally the 

 same; the differences between these races being such, as Avould undoubtedly 

 have led to their being ranked as distinct species, if their common parentage 

 were not known. Thus, of the numerous widely-different varieties of Apple, 

 Pear, Strawberry, Plum, &c., many have been produced in our own time ; 

 and there is no doubt, that all the forms of each fruit are descended from 

 wild stocks, extremely unlike any one of them. So the Cowslip, Primrose, 

 Oxslip, and Polyanthus, which were formerly regarded as constituting at least 

 two distinct species, have been shown to be all producible from the seeds of 

 one parent. And a single plant of the Orchideous tribe has borne flowers and 

 pseudo-bulbs, which were formerly considered as characteristic of three dis- 

 tinct genera. 



70. Of the origination of entirely new races of animals, distinguished by 

 physical peculiarities, and disposed to become permanent under circumstances 

 favourable to their perpetuation, we have frequent examples at the present 

 time. It is not uncommon to meet with individuals among our domesticated 

 animals, which differ from others of their kind, in some marked feature of 

 their conformation. If this be of a nature which impairs the value of the 

 animal, care is taken that it shall not propagate its race ; but, on the other 

 hand, if it afford a prospect of utility, the skill of the breeder is employed to 

 perpetuate it. One of the most remarkable examples of this kind, is to be 

 found in the origin of the Jlncon or Otter breed of Sheep, now common in 

 New England. In the year 1791, one of the ewes on the farm of Seth 

 Wright, in the State of Massachusetts, produced a male lamb, remarkable for 

 the singular length of its body, the shortness of its limbs, and the crookedness 

 of its fore-legs. This physical conformation, incapacitating the animal from 

 leaping fences, appeared to the farmers around so desirable, that they wished 

 it continued. Wright consequently determined on breeding from this ram ; 

 but the first year he obtained only two with the same peculiarities. In the 

 following years, he obtained greater numbers ; and when they became capable 

 of breeding with one another, the new race became permanent, the offspring 

 invariably having the Anton conformation, when both the parents belonged 

 to that breed. In the Human race, it is not uncommon to find particular 

 families distinguished by the possession of six fingers on each hand, and six 

 toes on each foot. If such were to intermarry exclusively with one another, 

 there can be no reasonable doubt that the children would invariably exhibit 

 the same peculiarity ; and the six-fingered race, which now tends, whenever 

 it is originated, to merge in the more general form, would then become per- 

 manent. When it is remembered that the influence of a scanty population, in 

 the early ages of the world, would have been precisely the same as that which 

 is now exercised by the breeders of animals, we can understand why the va- 

 rieties, which then arose, should have had a much greater tendency to become 

 permanent, than most of those which now present themselves. At the present 

 time, any peculiarity which may occasionally arise, speedily merges by inter- 

 .nixture with the mass, and returns to the common standard; but when popu- 

 lation was scanty, any peculiarities existing in one family would be perpetuated, 

 hy the intermixture of its members, rendered necessary by their isolation from 

 others ; and thus a new race would originate. 



71. For the cause of these occasional variations from the common type, 



