Chap. I.] UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. 41 



Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects 

 01 a course of selection, which may he 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 varie- 

 ties." 



If there exist savages so barbarous as never to think 

 of the inherited character of the offspring of their do- 

 mestic animals, yet any one animal particularly useful to 

 them, for any special purpose, would be carefully pre- 

 served during famines and other accidents, to which sav- 

 ages 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 indi- 

 viduals, 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 



