Chap. I. SELECTION BY MAN. 29 



Ask, as I have asked, a celebrated raiser of Hereford 

 cattle, whether his cattle might not have descended 

 from long-horns, and he will laugh you to scorn. I 

 have never met a pigeon, or poultry, or duck, or 

 rabbit fancier, who was not fully convinced that each 

 main breed was descended from a distinct species. Van 

 Mons, in his treatise on pears and apples, shows how 

 utterly he disbelieves that the several sorts, for instance 

 a Kibston-pippin or Codlin-apple, could ever have pro- 

 ceeded from the seeds of the same tree. Innumerable 

 other examples could be given. The explanation, I 

 think, is simple : from long-continued study they are 

 strongly impressed with the differences between the 

 several races; and though they well know that each 

 race varies slightly, for they win their prizes by select- 

 ing such slight differences, yet they ignore all general 

 arguments, and refuse to sum up in their minds slight 

 differences accumulated during many successive genera- 

 tions. May not those naturalists who, knowing far less 

 of the laws of inheritance than does the breeder, and 

 knowing no more than he does of the intermediate links 

 in the long lines of descent, yet admit that many of our 

 domestic races have descended from the same parents — 

 may they not learn a lesson of caution, when they de- 

 ride the idea of species in a state of nature being lineal 

 descendants of other species ? 



Selection. — Let us now briefly consider the steps by 

 which domestic races have been produced, either from 

 one or from several allied species. Some little effect may, 

 perhaps, be attributed to the direct action of the external 

 conditions of life, and some little to habit ; but he would 

 be a bold man who would account by such agencies for 

 the differences of a dray and race horse, a greyhound 

 and bloodhound, a carrier and tumbler pigeon. One of 

 the most remarkable features in our domesticated races 



