26 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



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 pointer certainly came from Spain, Mr. 

 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, Eng- 

 lish race-horses have come to surpass in fleetness and size the 

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

 wood 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. 



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 production of the distinct 

 strains. 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 upward of fifty years. There 

 is not a suspicion 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 gentle- 

 men is so great that they have the appearance of being quite dif- 

 ferent varieties." 



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

 herited character of the offspring of their domestic animals, yet 

 any one animal particularly useful to them, for any special pur- 

 pose, would be carefully preserved during famines and other acci- 

 dents, 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. 



