UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. 31 



Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of a 

 course of selection which maybe considered as unconscious, 

 in so far that the breeders could never have expected, or 

 even wished, to produce the result which ensued — namely, 

 the production of the distinct strains. The two flocks of 

 Leicester sheep kept by Mr. Buckley arid Mr. Burgess, as 

 Mr. Youatt remarks, " Have been purely bred from the 

 original stock of Mr. Bakewell for upward of fifty years. 

 There is not a suspicion existing in the mind of any one at 

 all acquainted with the subject that the owner of either of 

 them has deviated in any one instance from the pure blood 

 of Ml". Bakewell's flock, and yet the difEerence between the 

 sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is so great that 

 they have the appearance of being quite different varieties." 



If there exist savages so barbarous as never to think of 

 the inherited character of the offspring of their domestic 

 animalSj yet any one animal particularly useful to them, 

 for any special purpose, would be carefully preserved 

 during famines and other accidents, to which savages are 

 so liable, and such choice animals would thus generally 

 leave more offspring than the inferior ones; so that in this 

 case there would be a kind of unconscious selection going 

 on. We see the value set on animals even by the bar- 

 barians of Tierra del Euego, by their killing and devouring 

 their old women, in times of dearth, as of less value than 

 their dogs. 



In plants the same gradual process of improvement 

 through the occasional preservation of the best individuals, 

 whether or not sufficiently distinct to be ranked at their 

 first appearance as distinct varieties, and whether or not 

 two or more species or races have become blended together 

 by crossing, may plainly be recognized in the increased size 

 and beauty which we now see in the varieties of the hearts- 

 ease, rose, pelargonium, dahlia and other plants, when 

 compared with the older varieties or with their parent- 

 stocks. No one would ever expect to get a first-rate hearts- 

 ease or dahlia from the seed of a wild plant. No one 

 would expect to raise a first-rate melting pear from the 

 seed of the wild pear, though he might succeed from a 

 poor seedling growing wild, if it had come from a garden- 

 stock. The pear, though cultivated in classical times, 

 appears, from Pliny's description, to have been a fruit of 



