114 CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE 



nothing in support of the assumption that races recur 

 to one primitive stock, and so far as this evidence is 

 concerned, it falls to the ground. 



Suppose for a moment that it were so, and that 

 domesticated races, wheu turned wild, did return to 

 some common condition, I cannot see that this would 

 prove much more than that similar conditions are 

 likely to produce similar results; and that when you 

 take back domesticated animals into what we call 

 natural conditions, you do exactly the same thing as if 

 you carefully undid all the work you had gone through, 

 for the purpose of bringing the animal from its wild to 

 its domesticated state. I do not see anything very 

 wonderful in the fact, if it took all that trouble to 

 get it from a wild state, that it should go back into its 

 original state as soon as you removed the conditions 

 which produced the variation to the domesticated form. 

 There is an important fact, however, forcibly brought 

 forward by Mr. Darwin, which has been noticed in 

 connection with the breeding of domesticated pigeons ; 

 and it is, that however different these breeds of pigeons 

 may be from each other, and we have already noticed 

 the great differences in these breeds, that if, among 

 any of those variations, you chance to have a blue 

 pigeon turn up, it will be sure to have the black bars 

 across the wings, which are characteristic of the original 

 wild stock, the Rock Pigeon. 



Now, this is certainly a very remarkable circum- 

 stance; but I do not see myself how it tells very strongly 

 either one way or the other. I think, in fact, that 

 this argument in favour of recurrence to the primitive 

 type might prove a great deal too much for those 

 who so constantly bring it forward. For example, 



