234 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xn. 



found it difficult to obtain the specimen, whose skeleton was 

 presented to Sir Joseph Banks. We believe that, for many years, 

 no remnant of it has existed in the United States. 



Gratio Kelleia was not the progenitor of a race of six-fingered 

 men, as Seth Wright s ram became a nation of Ancon sheep, 

 though the tendency of the variety to perpetuate itself appears 

 to have been fully as strong in the one case as in the other. 

 And the reason of the difference is not far to seek. Seth 

 Wright took care not to weaken the Ancon blood by matching 

 his Ancon ewes with any but males of the same variety, while 

 Gratio Kelleia s sons were too far removed from the patriarchal 

 times to intermarry with their sisters ; and his grandchildren 

 seem not to have been attracted by their six-fingered cousins. 

 In other words, in the one example a race was produced, because, 

 for several generations, care was taken to select both parents of 

 the breeding stock from animals exhibiting a tendency to vary 

 in the same direction ; while, in the other, no race was evolved, 

 because no such selection was exercised. A race is a propagated 

 variety ; and as, by the laws of reproduction, offspring tend to 

 assume the parental forms, they will be more likely to propagate 

 a variation exhibited by both parents than that possessed by 

 only one. 



There is no organ of the body of an animal which may not, 

 and does not, occasionally, vary more or less from the normal 

 type ; and there is no variation which may not be transmitted, 

 and which, if selectively transmitted, may not become the 

 foundation of a race. This great truth, sometimes forgotten by 

 philosophers, has long been familiar to practical agriculturists 

 and breeders ; and upon it rest all the methods of improving the 

 breeds of domestic animals, which, for the last century, have 

 been followed with so much success in England. Colour, form, 

 size, texture of hair or wool, proportions of various parts, 

 strength or weakness of constitution, tendency to fatten or to 

 remain lean, to give much or little milk, speed, strength, temper, 

 intelligence, special instincts ; there is not one of these characters 

 whose transmission is not an every-day occurrence within the 



