Chap. XXI. SELECTION. 243 



perfection had been attained with our flowers, but a higher 

 standard has soon been reached. Hardly any fruit has been more 

 improved than the strawberry, yet a great authority remarks, 63 

 "it must not be concealed that we are far from the extreme 

 limits at which we may arrive." 



Time is an important element in the formation of our domestic 

 races, as it permits innumerable individuals to be born, and these 

 when exposed to diversified conditions are rendered variable. 

 Methodical selection has been occasionally practised from an 

 ancient period to the present day, even by semi-civilised people, 

 and during former times will have produced some effect. Uncon- 

 scious selection will have been still more effective ; for durino- 

 a lengthened period the more valuable individual animals will 

 occasionally have been saved, and the less valuable neglected. 

 In the course, also, of time, different varieties, especially in the 

 less civilised countries, will have been more or less modified 

 through natural selection. It is generally believed, though on 

 this head we have little or no evidence, that new characters in 

 time become fixed ; and after having long remained fixed it 

 seems possible that under new conditions they might again be 

 rendered variable. 



^ How great the lapse of time has been since man first domes- 

 ticated animals and cultivated plants, we begin dimly to see. 

 When the lake-buildings of Switzerland were inhabited during 

 the Neolithic period, several animals were already domes- 

 ticated and various plants cultivated. If we may judge from 

 what we now see of the habits of savages, it is probable that the 

 men of the earlier Stone period— when many great quadrupeds 

 were living which are now extinct, and when the face of the 

 country was widely different from what it now is-possessed 

 at least some few domesticated animals, although their remains 

 have not as yet been discovered. If the science of language 

 can be trusted the art of ploughing and sowing the land was 

 followed, and the chief animals had been already domesticated, 

 at an epoch so immensely remote, that the Sanskrit, Greek, 

 Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and Sclavonic languages had not as yet 

 diverged from their common parent-tongue. 64 



63 M. J. de Jonghe, in 'Gard. Chron ' 1858 d 173 



64 MaxMuller, ■ Science of Language/ 1861, p. 223. 



B 2 



