TOO NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



viduals the traces of generic markings for one 

 hundred, not to say, for hundreds of generations. 



Leaving now wild Nature for the products of 

 domestication, let us suppose that Darwin means to 

 assume that in the collective breed some character 

 of the ancestor has disappeared for many generations. 

 In such a case the tendency to reproduce the lost 

 character might, he says, " as was formerly remarked, 

 for all that we can see to the contrary, be transmitted 

 for almost any number of generations." Let us re- 

 member that he is here speaking of the individual 

 variation. Experience and observation inform us that 

 the law of marriage destroys all individual differences 

 before the seventh generation. Darwin, however, 

 informs us that the individual difference can lie latent, 

 and in this state be transmitted for almost any 

 number of generations, for all he can see to the 

 contrary ! 



() This sentence begins, " When a character has 

 been lost in a breed." He accordingly is speaking 

 here also of individual variations. Every breed that 

 is, every variety artificially formed by man is made 

 by the accumulation of individual differences that 

 appeared in the individuals selected by the breeders 

 to form it. These differences belong, therefore, to 

 the variability of the species as well as of the breed, 

 and have a tendency, accordingly, to break out occa- 

 sionally in all the breeds of a species, even in those 

 formed by differences accumulated in quite a different 

 direction. We may therefore read the sentence thus : 



