340 WE SHOULD STUDY 



seasons to contend with, and as these are upon the 

 average pretty nearly the same at the same place, 

 there is, in the same place and at the same time, 

 very little difference between any two wild animals 

 of the same species, if they are both of the same 

 age. Even if there is some difference of the places 

 in quantity of food, or any other circumstance which 

 is calculated to affect the race very deeply, thinning 

 of the numbers rather than dwarfing of the individual 

 is the immediate consequence ; though when severe 

 cold and scanty food are combined, the race dimin- 

 ishes in size. 



If we are to observe nature, therefore, we must 

 go to the wilds, because in all cultivated productions 

 there are secondary characters produced by the 

 artificial treatment, and we have no means of ob- 

 serving a distinction between these and those which 

 the same individual would have displayed had it 

 been left to a completely natural state. The longer 

 that the race has been under domestication and 

 culture, the changes are of course the greater. So 

 much is that the case, that in very many, both of the 

 plants and animals that have been in a state of do- 

 mestication since the earliest times of which we 

 have any record, we know nothing with certainty 

 about the parent races in their wild state. As to the 

 species, or, if you will, the genus, we can be certain. 

 The domestic horse has not been cultivated out of 

 an animal with cloven hoofs and horns ; and the 

 domestic sheep has never been bred out of any of 

 the ox tribe. So also wheat and barley have not 

 been cultivated out of any species of pulse, neither 

 have Windsor beans at any time been grasses. But 

 within some such limits as these our certain inform- 

 ation lies ; and for aught we know, the parent race 

 may, in its wild state, be before our eyes every day, 

 and yet we may not have the means of knowing that 

 it is so. The breeding artificially has been going 

 on for at least three thousand years, with some 



