36 UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. Chap. I. 



and tumblers with these breeds as now existing in 

 Britain, India, and Persia, we can, I think, clearly trace 

 the stages through which they have insensibly passed, 

 and come to differ so greatly from the rock-pigeon. 



Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of 

 a course of selection, which may be considered as un- 

 consciously followed, in so far that the breeders could 

 never have expected or even have wished to have pro- 

 duced the result which ensued — namely, the production 

 of two distinct strains. The two flocks of Leicester sheep 

 kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, as Mr. Youatt re- 

 marks, " have been purely bred from the original stock of 

 Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. There is not a 

 suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all ac- 

 quainted with the subject that the owner of either of 

 them has deviated in any one instance from the pure 

 blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock, and yet the difference 

 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 animals, 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 uncon- 

 scious selection going on. We see the value set on 

 animals even by the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, 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 indi- 

 viduals, whether or not sufficiently distinct to be ranked 



