274 



LAMAXCK, BIS LIFE AND WORK 



" The animal which lives a free, wandering life on 

 plains, where it habitually exercises itself in running 

 swiftly ; the birds whose needs (besoins) require them 

 unceasingly to traverse great spaces in the air, finding 

 themselves enclosed, some in the compartments of our 

 menageries or in our stables, and others in our cages 

 or in our poultry yards, are submitted there in time 

 to striking influences, especially after a series of re- 

 generations under the conditions which have made 

 them contract new habits. The first loses in large 

 part its nimbleness, its agility ; its body becomes 

 stouter, its limbs diminish in power and suppleness, 

 and its faculties are no longer the same. The second 

 become clumsy ; they are unable to fly, and grow more 

 fleshy in all parts of their bodies. 



" Behold in our stout and clumsy horses, habituated 

 to draw heavy loads, and which constitute a special 

 race by always being kept together — behold, I say, 

 the difference in their form compared with those of 

 English horses, which are all slender, with long necks, 

 because for a long period they have been trained to 

 run swiftly : behold in them the influence of a differ- 

 ence of habit, and judge for yourselves. You find 

 them, then, such as they are in some degree in 

 nature. You find there our cock and our hen in the 

 condition we have [made] them, as also the mixed 

 races that we have formed by mixed breeding be- 

 tween the varieties produced in different countries, or 

 where they were so in the state of dfemesticity. You 

 find there likewise our different races of domestic 

 pigeons, our different dogs, etc. What are our cul- 

 tivated fruits, our wheat, our cabbage, our lettuce, 

 etc, etc., if they are not the result of changes which 

 we ourselves have effected in these plants, in chang- 

 ing by our culture the conditions of their situation ? 

 Are they now found in this condition in nature? 

 To these incontestable facts add the considerations 

 which I have discussed in my Recherches sur Ics 



