to UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. Chap. I. 



naturally chosen and preserved the best varieties they could 

 anywhere inid. 



A laro-e amount of chang'c in our cultivated plants, thus 

 slowly and unconsciously accumulated, explains, as I believe, 

 the well-known fact that, in a number of cases, we cannot 

 recognize, and therefore do not know, the wild parent-stocks 

 of the plants which have been longest cultivated in our flower 

 and kitchen gardens. If it has taken centuries or thousands 

 of 3'^ears to improve or modify most of our plants up to their 

 present standard of usefulness to man, we can understand how 

 it is that neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any 

 other region inhabited by quite uncivilized man, has aiforded us 

 a single plant worth culture. It is not that these countries, so 

 rich in species, do not by a strange chance possess the abori- 

 ginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native plants 

 have not been improved by continued selection up to a stand- 

 ard of perfection comparable with that given to tiie plants in 

 countries anciently civilized. 



In regard to the domestic animals kept by uncivilized man, 

 it should not be overlooked that they almost always have to 

 struggle for their own food, at least during certain seasons. 

 And, in two countries very diifcrently circumstanced, individ- 

 \ials of the same species, having slightly-different constitutions 

 or structure, would often succeed better in the one country 

 than in the other; and thus by a process of "natural selec- 

 tion," as will hereafter be more fully explained, two sub-breeds 

 might be formed. This, perhaps, partly explains Avhat has 

 been remarked by soiiic authors, namely, that the varieties 

 kept by savages have more of the character of species than 

 the varieties kept in civilized countries. 



On the view here given of the all-important part which 

 selection by man has played, it becomes at once ob\-ious how 

 it is that our domestic races show adaptation in their stnicture 

 or in their habits to man's wants or fancies. We can, I think, 

 further understand the frequently-abnormal character of our 

 domestic races, and likewise their differences being so great 

 in external characters, and relatively so slight in internal parts 

 or organs. Man can hardly select, or only with much dilhculty, 

 any deviation of structure, excepting such as is externally vis- 

 ible ; and indeed he rarely cares for what is internal. He can 

 never act l)y selection, excepting on variations which are first 

 given to him in some slight degree by Nature. No man would 

 ever try to make a fantail till he saw a pigeon with a tail de- 



