VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 447 



Analogical and direct facts lead us to conclude that none of 

 the differences among mankind are so great as to require the 

 belief of their originality. 



Animated beings have a general tendency to produce offspring 

 resembling themselves, in both mental and corporeal qualities. 



" Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis ; 

 " Est in juvcncis, est in equis patrum 

 " Virtus : nee imbellem feroccs 

 " Progcnerant aquike columbam." * 



An exception occasionally occurs, much more frequently in- 

 deed in the domestic than the wild state, — the offspring differs 

 in some particular from the parents ; and by the force of the 

 general tendency transmits to its offspring its own peculiarity. 

 By selecting such examples, a breed peculiar in colour, figure, 

 the form of some one part, or in some mental quality, may be 

 produced. Thus, by killing all the black individuals which appear 

 among our sheep and breeding from the white only, our flocks 

 are white ; while, by an opposite practice pursued in some 

 countries, they are black : thus a ram accidentally produced on 

 a farm in Connecticut, with elbow-shaped fore-legs and a great 

 shortness and weakness of joint indeed in all four extremities, 

 was selected for propagation, and the ayxwv breed, unable to 

 climb over fences, is now established : f thus some breeds of 

 hares have horns like the roebuck : the Dorking fowl has two 

 hind claws ; and fowls indeed are bred in every conceivable 

 variety. J Individuals, distinguished from others by no greater 



* Horace. L. iv. od. 4. 



■f Thomson's AnnaU of Philosophy. No. 2. 



X The offspring most frequently resembles both parents, but the proportion 

 of resemblance to each, both on the whole and in regard to particular parts, is 

 various, — some children favouring the father most, some the mother, though 

 usually resembling each enough to preserve a family likeness, — some parts 

 being as it were an equable compound of the same in both parents, (as the 

 skin in the mulatto offspring of a black and white) some an unequal compound, 

 (as when the offspring of a black and white is white with patches of black, or 



