74 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



seen, as I am informed by him, any native dog in Spain 

 like our pointer. 



By a similar process of selection, and by careful train- 

 ing, English race-horses have come to surpass in fleetness 

 and size the parent Arabs, so that the latter, by the regu- 

 lations for the Goodwood races, are favored in the weights 

 which they carry. Lord Spencer and others have shown 

 how the cattle of England have increased in weight and 

 in early maturity, compared with the stock formerly kept 

 in this country. 



_ If there exist savages so barbarous as never 



to think of the inherited character of the off- 

 spring of their domestic animals, yet any one animal par- 

 ticularly useful to them, for any special purpose, would 

 be carefully preserved during famines and other acci- 

 dents, to which savages are so liable, and such choice 

 animals would thus generally leave more offspring than 

 the inferior ones ; so that in this case there would be a 

 kind of unconscious selection going on. We see the 

 value set on animals even by the barbarians of Tierra del 

 Fuego, by their killing and devouring their old women, 

 in times of dearth, as of less value than their dogs. 



ADAPTATION OF ANIMALS TO THE FANCIES OF MAN. 



On the view here given of the important 

 part which selection by man has played, it be- 

 comes at once obvious how it is that our domestic races 

 show adaptation in their structure or in their habits to 

 man's wants or fancies. We can, I think, further under- 

 stand the frequently abnormal character of our domestic 

 races, and likewise their differences being so great in ex- 

 ternal characters, and relatively so slight in internal parts 





