52 THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM. 



or produced from congenital varieties ; the native and original 

 types are mostly unknown to us. In tracing the natural history 

 of the dog, we must feel convinced that what we call breeds are 

 but varieties which have been generated by various causes, as 

 climate, peculiarity in food, restraint, and domestication. Man, 

 active in promoting his own benefit, has watched these gradual 

 alterations, and has improved and extended them by aiding the 

 causes that tend to their production, and by future care has per- 

 petuated and made them permanently his own. 



Many of the varieties among dogs and other domestic animals 

 are the effect of monstrosity, or have arisen from some anomaly 

 in the reproductive or breeding process. When these accidental 

 varieties have exhibited a peculiar organization or form which 

 could be applied to any useful or novel purpose, the objects have 

 been reared and afterwards bred from ; and when the singularity 

 has been observed in more than one of the same birth, it has been 

 easy to perpetuate it by breeding again from these congeners, 

 and confining the future intercourse to them. To these accidental 

 variations from general form and character among dogs we are 

 to attribute our most diminutive breeds, our pugs, bull-dogs, wry- 

 legged tarriers, and some others^^: our general breeds are, how- 

 necessities ; and, as though the degeneration was not sufficiently pursued, in 

 the polled breeds those original marks of distinction and safety, the horns, 

 also yield to the sacrifice. Even the finest edibles among our garden bulbs, 

 as the carrot, parsnep, &c. &c. are monstrosities, enlarged at the expense of 

 the stem and other parts : and the disproportionate magnitude of our fruit is at- 

 tributable to the monstrosity of the pericarp. It is not attempted to argue that 

 these are not actual advantages to mankind, nor to detract from the merit that 

 has introduced these acknowledged improvements ; it is merely suggested to 

 shew that misconception and mis- appropriation of terms often arise according 

 as the subject is viewed by the naturalist or the rural economist. 



'' Among other domesticated animals, prominent instances present them- 

 selves of accidental variety. ' The solidungular breed of swine, with their un-t 

 divided feet, and the ancon or otter breed of sheep, described by Colonel 

 Humphries, in Phil. Trans, for 1813, part i, may be noticed in 'proof. These 

 sheep were derived from the accidental deformity of one American lamb, born 

 with legs most disproportionately short to the rest of his body, which de- 



