so ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



informed by him, any native dog in Spain like our pointer. 

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

 English racehorses have come to surpass in fleetness and size 

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

 Goodwood Races, are favoured 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. 



Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of a 

 course of selection, which may be considered as unconscious, 

 in so far that the breeders could never have expected, or even 

 wished, to produce the result which ensued — namely, the pro- 

 duction of two distinct strains. The two flocks of Leicester 

 sheep kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, as Mr. Youatt 

 remarks, "have been purely bred from the original stock of 

 Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. There is not a sus- 

 picion existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted with 

 the subject, that the owner of either of them has deviated in 

 any one instance from the pure blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock, 

 and yet the difference between the sheep possessed by these 

 two gentlemen is so great that they have the appearance of 

 being quite dift'erent varieties." 



If there exist savages so barbarous as never to think of the 

 inherited character of the offspring of their domestic animals, 

 yet any one animal particularly useful to them, for any 

 special purpose, would be carefully preserved during famines 

 and other accidents, to which savages are so liable, and such 

 choice animals would thus generally leave more offspring 

 than the inferior ones ; so that in this case there would be a 

 kind of unconscious selection going on. We see the value set 

 on animals even by the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, by 

 their killing and devouring their old women, in times of 

 dearth, as of less value than their dogs. 



In plants the same gradual process of improvement, 

 through the occasional preservation of the best individuals. 



