VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION. 9 



under confinement, I may mention that carnivorous 

 animals, even from the tropics, breed in this country 

 pretty freely under confinement, with the exception of the 

 plantigrades or bear family, which seldom produce young; 

 whereas carnivorous birds, with the rarest exception, hardly 

 ever lay fertile eggs. Many exotic plants have pollen 

 utterly worthless, in the same condition as in the most 

 sterile hybrids. When, on the one hand, we see domesti- 

 cated animals and plants, though often weak and sickly, 

 breeding freely under confinement; and when, on the other 

 hand, we see individuals, though taken young from a state 

 of nature perfectly tamed, long-lived and healthy ( of 

 which I could give numerous instances), yet having their 

 reproductive system so seriously affected by unperceived 

 causes as to fail to act, we need not be surprised at this 

 system, when it does act under confinement, acting irregu- 

 larly, and producing offspring somewhat unlike their 

 parents. I may add that as some organisms breed freely 

 under the most unnatural conditions — for instance, rabbits 

 and ferrets kept in hutches— showing that their reproduct- 

 ive organs are not easily affected; so will some animals and 

 plants withstand domestication or cultivation, and vary 

 very slightly — perhaps hardly more than in a state of 

 nature. 



Some naturalists have maintained that all variations are 

 connected with the act of sexual reproduction; but this is 

 certainly an error; for I have given in another work a long 

 list of "sporting plants," as they are called by gardeners; 

 that is, of plants which have suddenly produced a single 

 bud with a new and sometimes widely different character 

 from that of the other buds on the same plant. These 

 bud variations, as they may be named, can be propagated 

 by, grafts, offsets, etc., and sometimes by seed. They 

 occur rarely under nature, but are far from rare under 

 culture. As a single bud out of many thousands produced 

 year after year on the same tree under uniform conditions, 

 has been known §uddenly to assume a new character; and 

 as buds on distinct trees, growing under different con- 

 ditions, have sometimes yielded nearly the same. variety — 

 for instance, buds on peach-trees producing nectarines, 

 and buds on common roses producing moss-roses — we 

 clearly see that the nature of the conditions is of subordi- 



