146 Intelligent Selection. 
been widely different from those that have appeared, and may have | 
been far more significant. That distinct species could have been 
thus produced is quite within the limits of probability. 
We have named this process Intelligent Selection, as distinguished 
from Natural Selection. Yet in reality, though the former is con- 
ducted by man’s intelligence instead of by the unaided influences 
of nature, there is no actual difference of principle between the 
two methods of selection. The changes which proceed with inter- 
minable slowness in the one case are greatly accelerated in the other ; 
yet while Natural Selection is the work of nature unaided, Intelli- 
gent Selection is but the work of nature aided. The influences 
tending to favor and preserve variations which nature employs 
occasionally and slowly, are frequently and rapidly employed by 
man, and thus animals and plants exhibit wider variations under 
man’s hands in years than they do under nature’s hands in centuries. 
Yet the principles which control the preservation of varieties are 
probably much the same in both cases, and all that man has done 
has been to accelerate the process. 
If, as is ordinarily believed, no new species or genera have been 
produced by man, though such have abundantly appeared in nature, 
a marked discrepancy would seem to exist between the action of 
Intelligent and Natural Selection. But it must be borne in mind 
that nature produces an extraordinary number of varieties as pre- 
liminary to every new species that appears. Ordinary variations 
are superficial, and of non-specific value. Variations in specifie 
characters are probably of rare occurrence, and their preservation 
yet rarer. Possibly they only arise as resultants of a long series 
of minor variations in the same general direction. If such be the 
case it is not surprising that the superficial variations with which 
man has to deal seldom or never accumulate into characters of spe- 
cific value—particularly in the lack of scientific direction. 
Yet that species have not been produced by man is more an as- 
sertion than a demonstrated fact. If we take the varieties of dogs, 
for instance, such wide differences in size, form, and habits appear 
that many of these varieties, if found in nature, would be at once 
aecepted as well-defined species. Yet it is declared that these dis- 
tinctions are but artificial, and would very quickly disappear if the 
dogs were restored to nature. This assertion is ordinarily quietly 
- accepted, yet it remains but an assertion. No one has ever proved 
