VJsrcoj^ serous selection. 29 



slight variations, either in the leaves, the flowers, or tlie 

 fruit, will produce races ditrering from eacli other chiefly 

 in these characters. 



It may be objected that the principle of selection has 

 been reduced to methodical practice for scarcely more than 

 three-quarters of a century; it has certainly been more at- 

 tended to of late years, and many treatises have been pub- 

 lished on the subject; and the result has been, in a corre- 

 sponding degree, rapid and important. But it is very far 

 from true that the principle is a modern discovery. I could 

 give several references to works of high antiquity, in wliich 

 the full importance of the principle is acknowledged. In 

 rude and barbarous periods of English history clioice ani- 

 mals were often imported, and laws were passed to prevent 

 their exportation: the destruction of horses under a certain 

 size was ordered, and this may be compared to the 

 ^^roguing" of plants by nurserymen. The principle of 

 selection I find distinctly given in an ancient Chinese ency- 

 clopedia. Explicit rules are laid down by some of the 

 Roman classical writers. From passages in Genesis, it is 

 clear that the color of domestic animals was at that early 

 period attended to. Savages now sometimes cross their 

 dogs with wild canine animals, to improve the breed, and 

 they formerly did so, as is attested by passages in Pliny. 

 The savages in South Africa match their draft cattle by 

 color, as do some of the Esquimaux their team of dogs. 

 Livingstone states that good domestic breeds are highly 

 valued, by the negroes in the interior of Africa who have 

 not associated with Europeans. Some of these facts do 

 not show actual selection, but they show that the breeding 

 of domestic animals vra-s carefully attended to in ancient 

 times, and is now attended to by the lowes-t savages. It 

 would, indeed, have been a strange fact, had attention not 

 been paid to breeding, for the inheritance of good and bud 

 qualities is so obvious. 



UXCOKSCIOUS SELECTION". 



At the present time, eminent breeders try by methodical 

 selection, with a distinct object in view, to make ;i new 

 strain or sub-breed, sujierior to anything of the kind in the 

 country. But, for our purpose, a form of selection, which 

 may be called unconscious, and which results from every 



