THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM. 51 



nothing more than an established variety being acted on in its 

 successive generations by the owner, in the direction of the 

 sexual intercourse, the selection of food, discipline of qualities, 

 and regulation of habits. 



That we may not, however, attribute principles to nature which 

 are, perhaps, much under the influence of art, it will be prudent 

 to recollect, that, in a philosophical point of view, we have no 

 such thing as a fure breed among any of our domestic animals. 

 Our most boasted specimens are either altogether degenerates^-, 



'* A more close examination of the subject will shew not only that oui- most 

 highly prized animals are degenerates, but that many of them are monstrosities. 

 Degeneracy, among naturalists, is a departure from originality and a state of 

 nature ; thus, philosophically, wild animals only can be considered as perfect. 

 But man, to gratify his artificial wants, has cultivated forms and properties in 

 them, which, however they may prove beneficial to himself, render the animals 

 subjected to such alterations unfitted for the purposes they were originally 

 destined for. What would become of some of our cultivated breeds of dogs, 

 were they turned loose in a wild country ? Could they even subsist in a state 

 of nature ? The high-bred greyhound's speed and vision united would fail in 

 the same circumstances; deprived, as he would find himself by cultivation, of 

 the means of following his prey through its various windings by scenting his 

 course. The pointer might stand, and his partners might hack him, until they 

 became together converted into monuments of devotion to an artificial excel- 

 lence which had converted them into a group of mummies : the pursuits of 

 their cultivated talent would infallibly starve them. 



As promoters of the ease and comforts of mankind, every one yields the 

 well-merited honours that are distributed among our enterprising cattle breed- 

 ers ; but the philosopher, retired from the world, and the naturalist, con- 

 templating his subject freed from extraneous bearings, — they regard the 

 boasted excellencies of our domestic animals in general as monstrosities. The 

 majestic large breed of heavy* cart horses, cultivated to their present stature by 

 the luxuriant nature of the herbage in this and some other countries, would 

 be ill calculated to save themselves from beasts of prey by either flight or 

 active resistance : their immense weight would sink them in loose soils, that 

 their more agile originals would bound over with instinctive celerity ; and the 

 scanty herbage in nature's wilds would ill suffice their multiplied wants. With 

 the ox and sheep a constitutional, obesity is encouraged, until the fat and mus- 

 cular parts are totally disproportioned to the bony mass that is to support them, 

 which lessens, according to modern excellence, in an inverse proportion to its 



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