INADEQUACY OP NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. G2Y 



native country, have probably in the course of successive con- 

 quests and migrations of tribes become more or less mixed, and 

 since they have been subject to the conditions of domestic life, 

 differing much from the conditions of their original wild life, and 

 since the English breed has undergone the perturbing effects of 

 change from the climate and food of the East to the climate and 

 food of the West, the organizations of the horse and mare in 

 question could have had nothing like that perfect balance pro- 

 duced in the quagga by a hundred centuries of harmonious co- 

 operation. Hence the result. And hence at the same time the 

 interpretation of the fact that analogous phenomena are not 

 obvious among most domestic animals, or among ourselves ; since 

 both have relatively mixed, and generally extremely mixed, con- 

 stitutions, which, as we see in ourselves, have been made genera- 

 tion after generation, not by the formation of a mean between 

 two parents, but by the jumbling of traits of the one with traits 

 of the other ; until there exist no such conspiring tendencies 

 among the parts as cause repetition of combined details of struc- 

 ture in posterity. 



Expectation that scepticism might be felt respecting this alleged 

 anomaly presented by the quagga-marked foal, had led me to 

 think over the matter ; and I had reached this interpretation 

 before sending to the College of Surgeons Museum (being unable 

 to go myself) to obtain the particulars and refer to the records. 

 When there was brought to me a copy of the account as set forth 

 in the Philosophical Transactions, it was joined with the informa- 

 tion that there existed an appended account of pigs, in which a 

 parallel fact had been observed. To my immediate inquiry 

 " Was the male a wild pig ? " there came the reply " I did not 

 observe." Of course I forthwith obtained the volume, and there 

 found what I expected. It was contained in a paper communi- 

 cated by Dr. Wollaston from Daniel Giles, Esq., concerning his 

 " sow and her produce," which said that 



" she was one of a well-known black and white breed of Mr. Western, the 

 Member for Essex. About ten years since I put her to a boar of the wild 

 breed, and of a deep chestnut colour which I had just received from 

 Hatfield House, and which was soon afterwards drowned by accident. The 

 pigs produced (which were her first litter) partook in appearance of both 

 boar and sow, but in some the chestnut colour of the boar strongly 

 prevailed. 



" The sow was afterwards put to a boar of Mr. Western's breed (the wild 

 boar having been long dead). The produce was a litter of pigs, some of 

 which, we observed with much surprise, to be stained and clearly marked with 

 the chestnut colour which had prevailed in the former litter." 



Mr. Giles adds that in a second litter of pigs, the father of which 

 was of Mr. Western's breed, he and his bailiff believe there was a 

 recurrence, in some, of the chestnut colour, but admits thai their 



