26 UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. [CHAP. I. 



the wild parent-stocks of the plants which have been longest culti- 

 vated in our flower and kitchen gardens. If it has taken centuries 

 or thousands of years to improve or modify most of our plants up 

 to their present standard of usefulness to man, we can understand 

 how it is that neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any 

 other region inhabited by quite uncivilised man, has afforded us a 

 single plant worth culture. It is not that these countries, so rich 

 in species, do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks 

 of any useful plants, but that the native plants have not been 

 improved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection 

 comparable with that acquired by the plants in countries anciently 

 civilised. 



In regard to the domestic animals kept by uncivilised man, it 

 should not be overlooked that they almost always have to struggle 

 for their own food, at least during certain seasons. And in two 

 countries very differently circumstanced, individuals of the same 

 species, having slightly different constitutions or structure, would 

 often succeed better in the one country than in the other ; and thus 

 by a process of "natural selection," as will hereafter be more fully 

 explained, two sub-breeds might be formed. This, perhaps, partly 

 explains why the varieties kept by savages, as has been remarked 

 by some authors, have more of the character of true species than 

 the varieties kept in civilised countries. 



On the view here given of the important part which selection by 

 man has played, it becomes at once obvious, how it is that our 

 domestic races show adaptation in their structure or in their habits 

 'LQ man's wants or fancies. We can, I think, further understand 

 the frequently abnormal character of our domestic races, and like- 

 wise their differences being so great in external characters, and 

 relatively so slight in internal parts or organs. Man can hardly 

 select, or only with much difficulty, any deviation of structure 

 excepting such as is externally visible ; and indeed he rarely cares 

 for what is internal. He can never act by selection, excepting on 

 variations which are first given to him in some slight degree by 

 nature. No man would ever try to make a fantail till he saw a 

 pigeon with a tail developed in some slight degree in an unusual 

 manner, or a pouter till he saw a pigeon with a crop of somewhat 

 unusual size ; and the more abnormal or unusual any character 

 was when it first appeared, the more likely it would be to catch his 

 attention. But to use such an expression as trying to make a fan- 

 tail, is, I have no doubt, in most cases, utterly incorrect. The man 

 who first selected a pigeon with a slightly larger tail, never dreamed 

 what the descendants of that pigeon would become through long- 

 continued, partly unconscious and partly methodical, selection. 

 Perhaps the parent-bird of all fan tails had only fourteen tail-feathers 

 some what expanded, like the present Java fan tail, or like individuals 



