200 SELECTION. Chap. XX. 



that " they are all very glad to get a European kangaroo dog, 

 and several instances have been known of the father killing 

 his own infant that the mother might suckle the much-prized 

 puppy." Diiferent kinds of dogs would be useful to the 

 Australian for hunting opossums and kangaroos, and to the 

 Fuegian for catching fish and otters ; and the occasional 

 preservation in the two countries of the most useful animals 

 would ultimately lead to the formation of two widely distinct 

 breeds. 



With plants, from the earliest dawn of civilisation, the best 

 variety which was known would generally have been cultivated 

 at each period and its seeds occasionally sown ; so that there 

 will have been some selection from an extremely remote 

 peiiod, but without any prefixed standard of excellence or 

 thought of the future. AVe at the present day profit by a 

 course of selection occasionally and unconsciously carried on 

 during thousands of years. This is proved in an interesting 

 manner by Oswald Heer's researches on the lake-inhabitants 

 of Switzerland, as given in a former chapter ; for he shows 

 that the grain and seed of our present varieties of w^heat, 

 barley, oats, peas, beans, lentils, and poppy, exceed in size 

 those which were cultivated in Switzerland during the 

 Neolithic and Bronze periods. These ancient people, during 

 the Neolithic period, possessed also a crab considerably larger 

 than that now growing wild on the Jura.^^ The pears described 

 by Pliny were evidently extremely inferior in quality to our 

 present pears. We can realise the effects of long-continued 

 selection and cultivation in another way, for would any one 

 in his senses expect to raise a first-rate apple from the seed of 

 a truly wild crab, or a luscious melting pear from the wild 

 pear? Alphonse de Candolle informs me that he has lately 

 seen on an ancient mosaic at Rome a representation of the 

 melon ; and as the Eomans, who were such gourmands, are 

 silent on this fruit, he infers that the melon has been greatly 

 ameliorated since the classical period. 



Coming to later times, Buffon,*- on comparing the flowers, 



*i See also Dr. Christ, in Riiti- ^^ The passage is given, ' Bull. Soc 



mcyer's * Pfahlbauten,' 1861, s. 226. d'AocIimat.,' 1358, p. 11. 



