VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION 3S 



gardens. If it has taken centuries or thousands of 

 years to improve or modify most of our plants up to 

 their present standard of usefulness to man, we can 

 understand how it is that neither Australia, the Cape 

 of Good Hope, nor any other region inhabited by quite 

 uncivilised man, has afforded us a single plant worth 

 culture. It is not that these countries, so rich in 

 species, do not by a strange chance possess the abori- 

 ginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native 

 plants have not been improved by continued selection 

 up to a standard of perfection comparable with that 

 given to the plants in countries anciently civilised. 



In regard to the domestic animals kept by uncivilised 

 man, it should not be overlooked that they almost 

 always have to struggle for their own food, at least 

 during certain seasons. And in two countries very 

 differently circumstanced, individuals of the same 

 species, having slightly different constitutions or 

 structure, would often succeed better in the one country 

 than in the other ; and thus by a process of ' natural 

 selection/ as will hereafter be more fully explained, 

 two sub-breeds might be formed. This, perhaps, partly 

 explains what has been remarked by some authors, 

 namely, that the varieties kept by savages have more 

 of the character of species than the varieties kept in 

 civilised countries. 



On the view here given of the all-important part 

 which selection by man has played, it becomes at once 

 obvious how it is that our domestic races show adapta- 

 tion in their structure or in their habits to man's wants 

 or fancies. We can, I think, further understand the 

 frequently abnormal character of our domestic races, 

 and likewise their differences being so great in external 

 characters and relatively so slight in internal parts or 

 organs. Man can hardly select, or only with much 

 difficulty, any deviation of structure excepting such as 

 is externally visible ; and indeed he rarely cares for 

 what is internal. He can never act by selection, ex- 

 cepting on variations which are first given to him in 

 some slight degree by nature. No man would ever try 



