xx DOMESTIC ANIMALS 317 



common enough a generation ago, as seen in all equestrian 

 pictures of the period, and is still occasionally practised. 

 In spite of all warnings of common sense and experience, we 

 continue, solely because it is the fashion, to torture and deform 

 our horses' mouths and necks with tight bearing-reins, which, 

 though only temporarily keeping the head in a constrained 

 and unnatural, and therefore inelegant position, produce many 

 permanent injuries. 1 Dogs may still be seen with the natural 

 form of their ears and tails " improved " by mutilation. 



Besides these and many other modifications of the form 

 given by nature, practised upon the individual animal, selective 

 breeding through many generations has succeeded in producing 

 inherited structural changes, sometimes of very remarkable 

 character. These have generally originated in some accidental, 

 perhaps slight, peculiarity, which has been taken advantage of, 

 perpetuated, and increased. In this way the race of bull-dogs, 

 with their shortened upper jaws, bandy legs, and twisted tails, 

 have been developed. The now fashionable " dachshund " is 

 another instance. In this category may also be placed polled 

 and humped cattle, tailless cats of the Isle of Man and 

 Singapore, lop-eared rabbits ; tailless, crested, or other strange 

 forms of fowls, pouter, tumbler, feather -legged, and other 

 varieties of pigeons, and the ugly double-tailed and prominent- 

 eyed goldfish which delight the Chinese. Thus the power 

 which, when judiciously exercised, has led to the vast improve- 

 ment seen in many^ domestic species over their wild progenitors, 

 has also ministered to strange vagaries and caprices, in the 

 production and perpetuation of monstrous forms. 



To return to man, the most convenient classification of our 

 subject will be one which is based upon the part of the body 

 affected, and I will begin with the treatment of the hair and 

 other appendages of the skin as the more superficial and com- 

 paratively trivial in its effects. 



Here we are at once introduced to the domain of fashion 

 in her most potent sway. The facility with which hair lends 

 itself to various methods of treatment has been a temptation 

 too great to resist in all known conditions of civilisation. 

 Innumerable variations of custom exist in different parts of 



1 See Bits and Bearing-Reins, by Edward Fordham Flower : London, 1879. 



