OF PUPPIES. 99 



some anomaly in the reproductive or breeding- process. 

 When these accidental varieties have exhibited a peculiar 

 organization or form which could be applied to any useful or 

 novel purpose, the objects have been reared and afterwards 

 bred from ; and when the singularity has been observed in 

 more than one of the same birth, it has been easy to perpe- 

 tuate it by breeding again from these congeners, and con- 

 fining the future intercourse to them. To these accidental 

 variations from general form and character among dogs we 

 are to attribute our most diminutive breeds, our pugs, bull 

 dogs, wry-legged terriers, and some others'^'. Our general 

 breeds are, however, rather the effect of slow cultivation than 

 of sudden and extraordinary production. 



It has been before observed, that every variety or breed has 

 a tendency to degenerate, or travel backwards to something 

 like the original standard : this tendency is greatest in the 

 accidental varieties or breeds just hinted at, in which a few 



* Among other domesticated animals, prominent instances present them- 

 selves of accidental variety. The solidungular breed of swine, with their 

 undivided feet, and the ancon or otter breed of sheep, described by Colonel 

 Humphries, in Phil. Trans, for 1813, part i, may be noticed in proof. These 

 sheep were derived from the accidental deformity of one American Iamb, born 

 with legs most disproportionately short to the rest of his body, which de- 

 formity, added to great crookedness of the fore legs, rendered him unable 

 either to run or to break fences. With these qualities it was determined to 

 attempt a breed of this kind ; and, 'by confining the intercourse between 

 him and his future offspring, it succeeded, and the ancon or otter breed is 

 now established. The pure milk-white breeds which we witness now as 

 permanent among ferrets, rabbits, mice, &c. originally sprang from one acci- 

 dental variety of each. Man himself is not exempt from this departure from 

 established form and character, as we witness in the Albino, who presents the 

 same leuccethiopic constitutional characters ia the deficiency of colouring 

 matter, a similar redness of iris and pupil, and consequently the same into- 

 lerance of light, as the other white animals. There have been, and still exist, 

 six-fingered families 5 and Mr. Lawrence informs us that the thick lip, yet 

 visible in some noble Austrian families, was introduced by the marriage of 

 the Emperor Maximilian with Mary of Burgundy. I have myself seen, 

 in Sussexj a breed of tailless cats. 



