

_ 2 6 Unconscious Selection. Chap - *< 



but what concerns its is, that the change has been effected uncon- 

 sciously and gradually, and yet so effectually, that, though the old 

 Spanish pointer certainly came from Spain, Mr. Borrow has not seen, 

 as I am informed by him, any native dog in Spain like our pointer. 



By a similar process of selection, and by careful training, English 

 racehorses have come to surpass in fleetness and size the parent 

 Arabs, so that the latter, by the regulations for the Goodwood Races, 

 are favoured in the weights which they carry. Lord Spencer and 

 others have shown how the cattle of England have increased in 

 weight and in early maturity, compared with the stock formerly 

 kept in this country. By comparing the accounts given in various 

 old treatises of the former and present state of carrier and tumbler 

 pigeons in Britain, India, and Persia, we can 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 unconscious, in so far that the 

 breeders could never have expected, or even wished, to produce 

 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 remarks, "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 

 .acquainted 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 unconscious 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 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 recognised in 



