CREATION BY LAW. 293 
terrestrial conditions, has been long ago reached. 
In cases, however, where this limit had not been so 
nearly reached as in the horse, we have been enabled 
to make a more marked advance and to produce a 
greater difference of form. The wild dog is an animal 
that hunts much in company, and trusts more to en- 
durance than to speed. Man has produced the grey- 
hound, which differs much more from the wolf or the 
dingo than the racer does from the wild Arabian. 
Domestic dogs, again, have varied more in size and 
in form than the whole family of Canide in a state 
of nature. No wild dog, fox, or wolf, is either so 
small as some of the smallest terriers and spaniels, 
or so large as the largest varieties of hound or New- 
foundland dog. And, certainly, no two wild animals 
of the family differ so widely in form and proportions 
as the Chinese pug and the Italian greyhound, or the 
bulldog and the common greyhound. The known range . 
of variation is, therefore, more than enough for the 
derivation of all the forms of Dogs, Wolves, and Foxes 
from a common ancestor. 
Again, it is objected that the Pouter or the Fan- 
tail pigeon cannot be further developed in the same 
direction. Variation seems to have reached its limits 
in these birds. But so it has in nature. The Fan- 
tail has not only more tail feathers than any of the 
three hundred and forty existing species of pigeons, 
but more than any of the eight thousand known 
species of birds. There is, of course, some limit to 
the number of feathers of which a tail useful for flight 
