426 THE CAUSES OF THE xi 



however, tell you that it is quite different. The 

 wild Horse of Asia is said to be of a dun colour, 

 with a largish head, and a great many other pe 

 culiarities ; while the best authorities on the wild 

 Horses of South America tell you that there is no 

 similarity between their wild Horses and those of 

 Asia Minor ; the cut of their heads is very differ 

 ent, and they are commonly chestnut or bay- 

 coloured. It is quite clear, therefore, that as by 

 these facts there ought to have been two primitive 

 stocks, they go for nothing in support of the as 

 sumption that races recur to one primitive stock, 

 and so far as this evidence is concerned, it falls to 

 the ground. 



Suppose for a moment that it were so, and 

 that domesticated races, when turned wild, did 

 return to some common condition, I cannot see 

 that this would prove much more than that simi 

 lar conditions are likely to produce similar results ; 

 and that when you take back domesticated ani 

 mals into what we call natural conditions, you do 

 exactly the same thing as if you carefully undid 

 all the work you had gone through, for the pur 

 pose 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 in 

 to its original state as soon as you removed the 

 conditions which produced the variation to the 

 domesticated form. There is an important fact, 



