A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 18 



the requirements of man in the pursuit of game 

 and his other vocations. The pyramids of 

 Egypt not only reveal at least three distinct 

 types of the dog, of widely varying character, 

 but they indicate that even in the hoary an- 

 tiquity from which they speak cattle were 

 esteemed for certain well-defined peculiarities, 

 and it is scarcely an overbold corollary from 

 this fact that the cattle were bred with a view 

 to the special production of certain highly- 

 esteemed marks. Thus we see how early man 

 began to adapt the beasts about him to his 

 uses, not merely by taming them but by breed- 

 ing with a view to more and more perfect 

 adaptation to his needs. 



The early experiments were doubtless crude 

 in the extreme, and yet it can scarcely be 

 doubted that they were suggested by the ap- 

 pearance of that tendency to variation which, 

 as will be seen in the course of this inquiry, 

 has been such a potent factor in the whole his- 

 tory of improvement and specialization. These 

 steps, therefore, feeble and tentative as they 

 were, proceeded on firm ground and indicated 

 a steady advance. It can hardly be doubted, 

 however, that all such progress was in the 

 main individual and in a great degree dictated 

 by chance, or at most by an unorganized though 

 rational seizure upon a windfall of fortune. 

 The advance through many centuries was, there- 



