54 THE NEXT GENERATION 



connoisseur ; this is done three times, at intervals of months, 

 and the sheep are each time marked and classed, so that the 

 very best may ultimately be selected for breeding. . . . And," 

 he continues, " not one man in a thousand has accuracy of 

 eye and judgment sufficient to become a good breeder." Lord 

 Sommerville speaks of their success : " It would seem as if 

 they had marked out upon a wall a form perfect in itself, 

 and then had given it existence." 



Do not forget that all this was before even the best breeders 

 had heard of Mendel's laws and before Darwin himself had 

 come to any conclusion about the power that controls the 

 changing forms of life. Remember that even before Mendel 

 and Darwin lived, breeders knew the following facts : 



1. By choosing ancestors they could get the desired type 

 of descendants. 



2. Only by preventing cross mating could these new types 

 be preserved. 



Darwin saw how easy it is to explain the beginning of any 

 species when man is behind, controlling ancestors. But he 

 wished to know how it comes about that wild animals have 

 changed, too. He wondered if there might not be other laws 

 which control descendants even when man has nothing to 

 do with choosing ancestors for them. He believed there were 

 such laws, and he hoped to find them. 



Darwin puzzled himself with this problem for twenty-three 

 years, and at last he did what he could to answer it, in his 

 book " On the Origin of Species by means of Natural 

 Selection." 



The volume itself was published in 1859. Twelve hundred 

 and fifty copies were printed for the first edition, and every 

 one was sold on the day of publication. Three thousand more 

 were printed. These went fast, too, and by 1876 sixteen 



