6306 



Tendency of Species 



— to exercise sight, hearing, and smell in seeking it, and in avoiding 

 dangers, in procuring shelter from the inclemency of the seasons, and 

 in providing for the subsistence and safety of its offspring. There is 

 no muscle of its body that is not called into daily and hourly activity ; 

 there is no sense or faculty that is not strengthened by continual 

 exercise. The domestic animal, on the other hand, has food provided 

 for it, is sheltered, and often confined, to guard it against the vicissi- 

 tudes of the seasons, is carefully secured from the attacks of its natural 

 enemies, and seldom even rears its young without human assistance. 

 Half of its senses and faculties are quite useless; and the other half 

 are but occasionally called into feeble exercise, while even its muscular 

 system is only irregularly called into action. 



Now when a variety of such an animal occurs, having increased 

 power or capacity in any organ or sense, such increase is totally use- 

 less, is never called into action, and may even exist without the animal 

 ever becoming aware of it. In the wild animal, on the contrary, all 

 its faculties and powers being brought into full action for the neces- 

 sities of existence, any increase becomes immediately available, is 

 strengthened by exercise, and must even slightly modify the food, the 

 habits, and the whole economy of the race. It creates as it were a 

 new animal, one of superior powers, and which will necessarily increase 

 in numbers and outlive those inferior to it. 



Again, in the domesticated animal all variations have an equal 

 chance of continuance ; and those which would decidedly render a 

 wild animal unable to compete with its fellows and continue its 

 existence are no disadvantage whatever in a state of domesticity. Our 

 quickly fattening pigs, short-legged sheep, pouter pigeons and poodle 

 dogs could never have come into existence in a state of nature, because 

 the very first step towards such inferior forms would have led to the 

 rapid extinction of the race ; still less could ihey now exist in compe- 

 tition with their wild allies. The great speed but slight endurance of 

 the race horse, the unwieldy strength of the ploughman's team, would 

 both be useless in a state of nature. If turned wild on the pampas, 

 such animals would probably soon become extinct, or inider favourable 

 circumstances might each lose those extreme qualities which would 

 never be called into action, and in a few generations would revert to a 

 common type, which must be that in which the various powers and 

 faculties are so proportioned to each other as to be best adapted to 

 procure food and secure safety, — that in which by the full exercise of 

 every part of his organization the animal can alone continue to live. 

 Domestic varieties, when turned wild, 7iftist return to something 



