44 UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. [Chap I. 



characters, and relatively so slight in internal parts or 

 organs. Man can hardly select, or only with much 

 difficulty, any deviation of structure excepting such as 

 is externally visible ; and indeed he rarely cares for 

 what is internal. He can never act by selection, 

 excepting on variations which are first given to him in 

 some slight degree by nature. ISTo man would ever try 

 to make a fantail till he saw a pigeon with a tail 

 developed in some slight degree in an unusual manner, 

 or a pouter till he saw a pigeon with a crop of 

 somewhat unusual size; and the more abnormal or 

 unusual any character was when it first appeared, the 

 more likely it would be to catch his attention. But to 

 use such an expression as trying to make a fantail, is, I 

 have no doubt, in most cases, utterly incorrect. The 

 man who first selected a pigeon with a slightly larger 

 tail, never dreamed what the descendants of that pigeon 

 would become through long-continued, partly un- 

 conscious and partly methodical, selection. Perhaps the 

 parent-bird of all fantails had only fourteen tail-feathers 

 somewhat expanded, like the present Java fantail, ■ or 

 like individuals of other and distinct breeds, in which 



many as seventeen tail-feathers have been counted. 

 Perhaps the first pouter-pigeon did not inflate its crop 

 much more than the turbit now does the upper part of 

 its oesophagus, — a habit which is disregarded by all 

 fanciers, as it is not one of the points of the breed. 



Not let it be thought that some great deviation of 

 structure would be necessary to catch the fancier's eye : 

 he perceives extremely small differences, and it is in 

 human nature to value any novelty, however slight, in 

 one's own possession. Nor must the value which would 

 formerly have been set on any slight differences in the 



