70 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



ANIMALS UNDER DOMESTICATION. Darwin made in- 

 numerable experiments on domestic animals and plants. 

 Of course he could only set the animal forms around 

 him to doing what nature had always been doing, in 

 the perpetuation of wild animals. In domesticity, 

 man, when making a business of producing animals 

 and vegetables for his own use, destroys the undesirable 

 variations, and preserves only those useful to man. This 

 makes the process of artificial selection operate only 

 more rapidly than natural selection does in the wild 

 state ; and the changes that occur could be seen by man ; 

 while natural selection producing individuals in the w r ild 

 state adapted to the environment, for their own benefit, 

 away from the vision of man, occupies such long periods, 

 and operates so obscurely, that man can seldom note 

 its action directly. The object of man's selection is en- 

 tirely different from the meaning of natural selection. 

 Nature takes her own time, which undoubtedly is very 

 long, in most instances, in deriving a new species; not 

 for the benefit of man, but for the benefit of the or- 

 ganism selected, and of the race to which it belongs, by 

 the preservation of those best adapted to perpetuate 

 the life of the species, under the existing natural con- 

 ditions. 



Experiments in breeding, both in vegetables, and 

 animals, have continued for many generations, by man. 

 Domestic cattle have been bred both for meat and milk, 

 almost ever since the wild species were domesticated, 

 by the Aryans and Semites. Horses have been domesti- 

 cated, and bred for burden bearers, for racing, trotting. 

 carriage, and wagon transportation ; sheep for meat 

 and wool ; the hog for his meat ; chickens and turkeys, 

 for meat and eggs ; geese, for meat and feathers ; song 

 birds for their music and beauty; and the other birds 



