368 WE SHOULD STUDY 



Even if there is some difference of the places in 

 quantity of food, or any other circumstance which 

 is calculated to affect the race very deeply, thin- 

 ning of the numbers rather than dwarfing of the 

 individual is the immediate consequence ; though 

 when severe cold and scanty food are combined, 

 the race diminishes in size. 



If we are to observe nature, therefore, we must 

 go to the wilds, because, in all cultivated produc- 

 tions, there are secondary characters produced by 

 the artificial treatment, and we have no means of 

 observing a distinction between these, and those 

 which the same individual would have displayed, 

 had it been left to a completely natural state. 

 The longer that the race has been under the do- 

 mestication and culture, the changes are of course 

 the greater. So much is that the case, that in 

 very many both of the plants and animals that 

 have been in a state of domestication since the 

 earliest times of which we have any record, we 

 know nothing with certainty about the parent 

 races in their wild state. As to the species, or, if 

 you will, the genus, we can be certain. The do- 

 mestic horse has not been cultivated out of an 

 animal with cloven hoofs and horns ; and the do- 

 mestic sheep has never been bred out of any of 

 the ox tribe. So also wheat and barley have 

 not been cultivated out of any species of pulse, 

 neither have Windsor beans, at any time, been 

 grasses. But within some such limits as these 

 our certain information lies; and for aught we 

 know the parent race may, in its wild state, be 

 before our eyes every day, and yet we may not have 

 the means of knowing that it is so. The breeding 

 artificially, has been going on for at least three 

 thousand years, with some change at every sue- 



