LOSS OF HOENS. 15 



of our domesticated cattle there may have appeared an. 

 occasional hornless animal. But while we think it more 

 than probable that that may have been the case, we are 

 nevertheless inclined to regard the common belief as 

 accurate in at least one sense. 



There is, we conceive, ample proof in support of the con- 

 clusion that those sudden losses of horns — those spontane- 

 ous variations, or proper organic changes, which have given 

 us our known polled varieties — have really occurred since 

 domestication took place. It is admitted by all authori- 

 ties — Darwin clearly enforces the point — that while 

 deviations from the original or typical form of races of 

 animals may arise spontaneously, some sort of artificial 

 method or selection in breeding is necessary in order to 

 impart to those spontaneous and isolated deviations such 

 fixity of character, or such strong hereditary power, as 

 would insure their perpetuation. Among cattle com- 

 pletely wild, no artificial selection could take place ; and 

 therefore any such sudden and radical variation as the 

 loss of horns which may have occurred among ancient 

 wild cattle, would in all probability have been rapidly 

 obliterated by the undirected flow of long-sustained nat- 

 ural forces. With cattle under domestication the case is 

 different. The appearance of new characters, whether the 

 loss of horns or some other feature, might be talcen advan- 

 tage of by the owners, who, by isolating the animals pos- 

 sessing the peculiarities desired to be perpetuated, and 

 breeding from none but these, would succeed in stamping 

 with less or more hereditary fixity those favoured features 

 or changes which at first were but transitory, and which, 

 had not artificial means been taken to preserve them, 

 would have quickly disappeared, merging again, as it were, 

 into the main current from which they had temporarily 

 strayed. 



In this connection it should be remembered that, 

 although the general principles which regulate the laws 



