36 HEREDITY AND EUGENICS 



conditions or general inhibition to growth. The 

 Japanese method of producing dwarf trees b}- star- 

 vation is sometimes copied by nature. When a 

 tree seedhng germinates in a cleft of a rock where 

 little nourishment is obtainable it may struggle on 

 for decades, making an infinitesimal amount of 

 growth each ^xar. Various instances are known in 

 which domesticated animals in becoming feral under 

 a rigorous climate have decreased conspicuously in 

 size. This is probably the history of the Shetland 

 ponies and others. It is certainly the origin of the 

 somewhat larger ponies from Sable Island, Nova 

 Scotia. These are known to be descended (St. John, 

 1 921) from horses taken to this desolate little island 

 from Massachusetts. The historv of these horses 

 and other feral animals on Sable Island is of such 

 interest, in showing how a group of animals may 

 react when removed from the care and selection of 

 civilised man, that I refer to the subject at some 

 length. The facts are taken from St. John (1921) 

 and Gilpin (1864). 



Sable Island is a long crescent of sand dunes, now 

 twxnt}' miles long and less than a mile wide, about 

 150 miles east of Halifax, Nova Scotia. When first 

 visited in the sixteenth centur}^, it was apparently 

 ten miles longer and two miles wide. Ever}^ few 

 years a great storm washes away some part of the 

 island. The higher dunes now reach nearly 100 feet, 

 but were formerly higher. It is surrounded by shoals, 

 and hundreds of wrecks have occurred on its shores, 

 giving it the lugubrious distinction of being the 

 " graveyard of the Atlantic." On this inhospitable 

 island the Portuguese landed cattle and pigs about 

 1520. In 1633 a writer reported, " about 800 cattle, 

 small and great, all red, and the largest he ever saw." 

 Large numbers of wild cattle were afterwards shipped 

 from the island, according to a letter written in 1686, 



