110 CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE 



carefully undid all the work you liad gone through, 

 for the purpose of bringing the animal from its wild 

 to its domesticated state. I do not see anything very 

 wonderful in the fact, if it took all that trouble to get 

 it from a wild state, that it should go back into its 

 original state as soon as you remove the conditions 

 which produced the variation to the domesticated form. 

 There is an important fact, however, forcibly brought 

 forward by Mr. Darwin, which has been noticed in 

 connection with the breeding of domesticated pigeons ; 

 and it is, that however different these breeds of pigeons 

 may be from each other, and we have already noticed 

 the great differences in these breeds, that if, among 

 any of those variations, you chance to have a blue 

 pigeon turn up, it will be sure to have the black bars 

 across the wings, which are characteristic of the origi- 

 nal wild stock, the Rock Pigeon. 



Now, this is certainly a very remarkable circum- 

 stance ; but I do not see myself how it tells very 

 strongly either one way or the other. I think, in fact, 

 that this argument in favour of recurrence to the primi- 

 tive type might prove a great deal too much for those 

 who so constantly bring it forward. For example, Mr. 

 Darwin has very forcibly urged, that nothing is com- 

 moner than if you examine a dun horse — and I had an 

 opportunity of verifying this illustration lately, while 

 in the islands of the West Highlands, where there are 

 a great many dun horses — to find that horse exhibit 

 a long black stripe down his back, very often stripes 

 on his shoulder, and very often stripes on his legs. I, 

 myself, saw a pony of this description a short time ago, 

 in a baker's cart, near Rothesay, in Bute : it had the 

 long stripe down the back, and stripes on the shoulders 



