440 CAUSES OF THE VARIETIES 



largest, and their nature has suffered least degradation. 

 The sliecp of Barbary, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Tartary, &c. 

 have undergone greater changes. In relation to man, they 

 are improved in some articles, and vitiated in others; but 

 with regard to nature, improvement, and degeneration, are 

 the same thing; for they both imply an alteration of original 

 constitution. Their coarse hair is changed into fine wool. 

 Their tail, loaded with a mass of fat, and sometimes reaching 

 the weight of forty pounds, has acquired a magnitude so 

 incommodious, that the animals trail it with pain. While 

 swollen with superfluous matter, and adorned with a beauti- 

 ful fleece, their strength, agility, magnitude, and arms are 

 diminished. These long-tailed sheep are half the size only 

 of the mouflon. They can neither fly from danger, nor re- 

 sist the enemy. To preserve and multiply the species, they 

 require the constant care and support of man. The dege- 

 neration of the original species is still greater in our cli- 

 mates. Of all the qualities of the mouflon, our ewes and 

 rams have retained nothing but a small portion of vivacity, 

 which yields to the crook of the shepherd. Timidity, weak- 

 ness, resignation, and stupidity, are the only melancholy re- 

 mains of their degraded nature "*." 



The pig-kind afford an instructive example, because their 

 descent is more clearly made out than that of many other 

 animals. The dog, indeed, degenerates before our eyes ; 

 but it will hardly ever, perhaps, be satisfactorily ascertained 

 whether there is one or more species. The extent of dege- 

 neration can be observed in the domestic swine ; because no 

 naturalist has hitherto been sceptical enough to doubt whe- 

 ther they descended from the wild boar ; and they were cer- 

 tainly first introduced by the Spaniards into the new world. 

 The pigs conveyed in 1509, from Spain to the West Indian 

 island Cubagua, then celebrated for the pearl fishery, dege- 

 nerated into a monstrous race with toes half a span long f. 

 Those of Cuba became more than twice as large as their Eu- 



* BuFFON, by Wood ; v. iv. p. 7. 



+ IIkrrera, Heches de las CasfeUanos en las Jslas, ^)V. v. i. p. 239. 



