VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION 



and Mr. Burgess. Mr. Youatt, one of the greatest authorities 

 on breeding domestic animals, says: "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 original 

 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." In this case there was no 

 desire to deviate from the original breed, and the difference 

 must have arisen from some slight difference of taste or judg- 

 ment in selecting, each year, the parents for the next year's 

 stock, combined perhaps with some direct effect of the slight 

 differences of climate and soil on the two farms. 



Most of our domesticated animals and cultivated plants 

 have come to us from the earliest seats of civilisation in 

 Western Asia or Egypt, and have therefore been the subjects 

 of human care and selection for some thousands of years, the 

 result being that, in many cases, we do not knoAv the wild 

 stock from which they originally sprang. The horse, the 

 camel, and the common bull and cow are nowhere found in a 

 wild state, and they have all been domesticated from remote 

 antiquity. The original of the domestic fowl is still wild in 

 India and the Malay Islands, and it was domesticated in India 

 and China before 1400 B.C. It was introduced into Europe 

 about 600 B.C. Several distinct breeds were known to the 

 Eomans about the commencement of the Christian era, and 

 they have since spread all over the civilised world and been 

 subjected to a vast amount of conscious and unconscious 

 selection, to many varieties of climate and to differences of 

 food ; the result being seen in the wonderful diversity of breeds 

 which differ quite as remarkably as do the different races of 

 pigeons already described. 



In the vegetable kingdom, most of the cereals — wheat, 

 barley, etc. — are unknown as truly wild plants ; and the same 

 is the case with many vegetables, for De Candolle states that 

 out of 157 useful cultivated plants thirty-two are quite un- 

 known in a wild state, and that forty more are of doubtful 

 origin. It is not improbable that most of these do exist 

 wild, but they have been so profoundly changed by thousands 

 of years of cultivation as to be quite unrecognisable. The 



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