30 XTNCONSGIOUS SELECTION. 



one tiying to possess and breed from the best individual 

 animals, is more important. Tims, a man who intends 

 keeping pointers naturally tries to get as good dogs as he can, 

 and afterward breeds from his own best dogs, but he has 

 no wish or expectation of permanently altering the breed. 

 Nevertheless we may infer that this process, continued 

 during centuries, would improve and modify any breed, in 

 tlie same way as Bakewell, Collins, etc., by this very same 

 process, only carried on more methodically, did greatly 

 modify, even during their lifetimes, the forms and qualities 

 of their cattle. Slow and insensible changes of this kind 

 can never be recognized unless actual measurements or care- 

 ful drawings of the breeds in question have been made long 

 ago, which may serve for comparison. In some cases, how- 

 ever, unchanged, or but little changed, individuals of the 

 same breed exist in less civilized districts, where the breed 

 has been less improved. There is reason to believe that 

 King Charles^ spaniel has been unconsciously modified to a 

 large extent since the time of that monarch. Some highly 

 competent authorities are convinced that the setter is 

 directly derived from the spaniel, and has probably been 

 slowly altered from it. It is known that the English 

 pointer has been greatly changed within the last century, 

 and in this case the change has, it is believed, been chiefly 

 effected by crosses with the foxhound; but what concerns 

 us is, that the change has been effected unconsciously and 

 gradually, and yet so effectually that, though the old 

 Spanish j)ointer certainly came from Spain, Sir. Borrow 

 has not seen, as I am informed by him, any native dog in 

 Spain like our pointer. 



By a similar process of selection, and by careful training, 

 English race-horses have come to surpass in fleetness and size 

 the parent Arabs, so that the latter, by the regulations for 

 the Goodwood Races, are favored in the weights which they 

 carry. Lord Spencer and others have shown how the 

 cattle of England have increased in weight and in early 

 maturity, compared with the stock formerly kept in this 

 country. By comparing the accounts given in various old 

 treatises of the former and present state of carrier and 

 tumbler pigeons in Britain, India and Persia, we can trace 

 the stages through which they have insensibly passed, and 

 come to differ so greatly from the rock-pigeon. 



