22 THE BREEDING PROBLEM. 



Very much of this divergence is due to climatic influences, which alone are 

 suflicieutly powerful, in the changes of food and of habit which necessarily 

 follow, to account for nearly all the varieties which have been produced. A 

 warm climate and a bountiful supply of nutritious food from birth to maturity 

 promote growth and development, while a scanty supply of food and a rigor- 

 ous climate hare a tendency to retard growth and arrest development. A knowl- 

 edge of the eflects of heat and cold upon growth and development, has been 

 taken advantage of by breeders for the purpose of producing dwarf specimens. 

 The breeder of Bantam fowls is careful to have his chicks hatched late in the 

 season, so that the early approach of cold weather may arrest development. 

 The bleak, barren and tempestuous islands — lying in the high latitude of 59 

 and 60 degrees — north of Scotland, with their scanty subsistence and long 

 winters, have dwarfed the horse until he appears as the diminutive Shetland 

 pony, while, from the same original, the rich herbage, nutritious grains and 

 mild climate ten degrees further south, on the coast of France, have given us 

 the immense draft horses of Normandy and Flanders. 



But while climate and the necessarily accompanying influences have done 

 much to cause the divergence which now exists in races that were once uni- 

 form, selection by the hand of man has also been actively at work, in some cases 

 co-operating with the influences of climate, thereby accelerating the trans- 

 formation, and in others counteracting its effect. We have an illustration of 

 this in the horses of Canada. It is quite evident that the causes that have 

 given us the tough, shaggy Canadian pony, if continued without interruption 

 for a succession of generations, and accelerated by the efibrts of breeders in se- 

 lecting animals for the purpose of reproduction, with the same object constantly 

 in view, would, in course of time, give us a race as diminutive as the ponies of 

 the Shetland Islands. But this climatic influence has been retarded and counter- 

 acted by Canadian breeders, who have rejected the smaller specimens for 

 breeding purposes, and have constantly drawn upon the large draft breeds of 

 Europe for fresh crosses. To such an extent has this infusion of fresh blood 

 been carried for twenty-five years past, that the influences of climate have been 

 overpowered, and the progression has been decidedly in the opposite direction. 

 The efforts of Canadian breeders in this direction have been aided materially 

 by the improved condition of agriculture in the Dominion, which has led to a 

 more liberal system of feeding, and more thorough protection from the rigor 

 of the climate. And thus the forces and influences of nature, in some cases 

 aided and in others counteracted by the efforts of man, have constantly l)een 

 at work breaking up the uniformity which originally characterized all our 

 domestic animals, imtil divergence from the original type has become, in many 

 instances, truly wonderful. 



The influences of selection, in creating divergence from a type singularly 

 uniform, finds a most striking illustration in the case of the domestic pigeon, 

 of which there are now nearly 300 known varieties, more or less distinct, and 

 all descended from the common wild rock pigeon. Among these varieties the 

 divergence is remarkable, not only in the color of the plumage, which in the 

 original is uniform, but in the shape and markings of the various parts. 

 Who would imagine, at first thought, that the Pouters, the Carriers, the Runts, 



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