Chap. XX. UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. 215 



are hard pressed by want, they kill their old women for food 

 rather than their clogs ; for, as we were assured, " old women no 

 use— dogs catch otters." The same sound sense would surely 

 lead them to preserve their more useful dogs when still harder 

 pressed by famine. Mr. Oldfield, who has seen so much of the 

 aborigines of Australia, informs me that " they are all very 

 glad to get a European kangaroo dog, and several instances 

 have been known of the father killing his own infant that the 

 mother might suckle the much-prized puppy." Different kinds 

 of dogs would be useful to the Australian for hunting opossums 

 and kangaroos, and to the Fuegian for catching fish and otters ; 

 and the occasional preservation in the two countries of the most 

 useful animals would ultimately lead to the formation of two 

 widely distinct breeds. 



With plants, from the earliest dawn of civilisation, the best 

 variety which at each period was known would generally have 

 been cultivated and its seeds occasionally sown ; so that there 

 will have been some selection from an extremely remote 

 period, but without any prefixed standard of excellence or 

 thought of the future. We at the present day profit by a course 

 of selection occasionally and unconsciously carried on during 

 thousands of years. This is proved in an interesting manner 

 by Oswald Heer's researches on the lake-inhabitants of Switzer- 

 land, as given in a former chapter ; for he shows that the grain 

 and seed of our present varieties of wheat, barley, oats, peas, 

 beans, lentils, and poppy, exceed in size those which were culti- 

 vated in Switzerland during the Neolithic and Bronze periods. 

 These ancient people, during the Neolithic period, possessed also 

 a crab considerably larger than that now growing wild on the 

 Jura. 81 The pears described by Pliny were evidently extremely 

 inferior in quality to our present pears. We can realise the effects 

 of long-continued selection and cultivation in another way, for 

 would any one in his senses expect to raise a first-rate apple from 

 the seed of a truly wild crab, or a luscious melting pear from 

 the wild pear ? Alphonse De Candolle informs me that he has 

 lately seen on an ancient mosaic at Eome a representation of 



81 See also Dr. Christ, in < Butimeyer's PfaHbauten,' 1861, s. 226. 



