PRODUCTION OF NEW RACES. 121 



iii their general conformation, but also in whatever peculiarities 

 may distinguish the latter. In the Human species, for example, 

 hereditary influences are manifested in a number of forms. 

 Bodily constitutions, mental faculties, characters, even infir- 

 mities, are bequeathed from generation to generation ; and in 

 animals among which fewer external circumstances act upon the 

 individuals, producing irregularities in this repetition of the same 

 forms and qualities, the tendency of the young to resemble the 

 authors of their existence is still more evident. Now all the 

 individuals of the same species do not possess, to the same degree, 

 the physical, moral, and intellectual qualities, with which each 

 of them is endowed ; and by the exercise or the influence of 

 physical conditions, we can develope a particular faculty, and 

 consequently increase these differences. It follows, then, that 

 Man may, within certain limits, modify races at his pleasure ; 

 for he is able to choose, or even to produce, individual differ- 

 ences, which are transmissible from one to the other ; and to 

 regulate the succession of generations, so as to remove from them 

 all that would tend to separate the race from the type which he 

 wishes to produce; and he can thus influence the hereditary 

 qualities of the young, as he had done those of their parents. 

 It results, therefore, from this, that at each new generation, he 

 advances a step nearer to the end that he proposed to himself; 

 for he acts upon individuals already affected by the modifications 

 that had been impressed upon their parents. 



108. A very good example of the degree in which accidental 

 peculiarities, appearing in a single individual only, may be taken 

 advantage of by Man, for some purpose useful to him, is of com- 

 paratively recent occurrence. In the year 1791, one of the ewes 

 on the farm of Seth Wright, in the state of Massachusets, 

 produced a male lamb, which, from the singular length of its 

 body, and the shortness of its legs, received the name of the 

 otter breed. This peculiar conformation, rendering the animal 

 unable to leap fences, appeared to the farmers around so desir- 

 able, that they wished it continued. Wright determined on 

 breeding from this ram ; but the first year only two of its 

 offspring were marked by the same peculiarities. In succeeding 





