Intelligent Selection. 149 
possessed in their wild state has disappeared, and been replaced by 
no new intelligence. There are no more stupid animals on the face 
of the earth than the cattle and sheep of the farm. The hog and 
the horse are less so, the former because he has preserved some 
degree of feral independence, and the latter because his duties have 
required some degree of intelligence. 
But the dog has protected instead of being protected by man, 
and has thus, except in some special varieties, retained its natural 
intelligence. And its employment under man has been such as to 
develop and preserve a new intelligence. The dog has been for 
ages man’s companion. Its natural instincts have been retained, 
while upon them have been laid new instincts of the same general 
character ; and its powers of observation have been very greatly 
widened and sharpened. It has been in contact with men mentally, 
and its own mental powers have been developed thereby. And 
finally selection, while devoted largely to peculiarities of form, has 
been yet more largely devoted to peculiarities of habit—to intel- 
lectual characteristics. Intelligence has been selected in dogs, and 
in this alone of all domesticated species. 
Of the other species on which selection for intelligence might 
have been practiced, preventive circumstances have hindered. The 
cats are natively as independent as the dogs. But the domestic cat 
is only in a minor sense a tamed animal. In its reproductive habits 
it is a wild creature. In consequence selection has been almost im- 
possible, and very few varieties of cats have appeared. Such as- 
exist, indeed, are probably due to natural, not to intelligent selec- 
tion. The monkeys, and particularly the higher apes, would be 
remarkably well adapted to selection for intelligence, but unfortu- 
nately they do not breed well in captivity. The anthropoid apes 
indeed, not only do not breed, but have never lived long in cap- 
tivity, so that this promising field of selective experiment is practi- 
cally closed. What results might arise could a fertile domestic race 
of orangs or chimpanzees be produced, it is not easy to decide. 
The marked intelligence and teachableness displayed by individuals, 
with no hereditary powers but those derived from a wild-woods life, 
is significant of remarkable developments could they be made to 
breed in captivity. It would not be easy to give them new vocal 
organs, and teach them to talk, but by long-continued selection their 
brains might be developed in size and power until they became the 
equal in intelligence of some of the lowest savage tribes of man. 
