208 



ON THE VARIETIES 



behold how readily it is often copied by the generative principle, and how te- 

 naciously it adheres to the future lineage. A preternatural defect of the hand or 

 foot has been propagated for many generations, and has in numerous instances 

 laid a foundation for the family name. The names of Varus and Plautus 

 among the ancient Romans afford familiar exemplifications. Hence, hornless 

 sheep and hornless oxen produce an equally hornless offspring; the broad- 

 tailed Asiatic sheep yields a progeny with a tail equally monstrous, and often 

 of not less than half a hundred pounds' weight ; and dogs and cats with muti- 

 lated tails not unfrequeutly propagate the casual deficiency. 



There is a very peculiar variety of the sheep kind given in the Philosophical 

 Transactions for 1813, by Colonel Humphreys of America, and which the 

 American naturalists have called from its bowed or elbowy legs, ovis Ancon: 

 but the common people " the otter breed," from its resemblance to the gene- 

 ral form of the otter, and a rumour that it was at first produced by an unnatural 

 intercourse between individuals of the two distinct kinds. Its size is small ; the 

 full weight being about 45lb., with loose articulations, crooked fore-legs, and 

 great feebleness of power ; whence it walks M'ith difficulty, and is therefore 

 quiet, and not fond of rambling. Accident seems to have produced this kind 

 first, but the form has been most correctly preserved in the progeny ; and so 

 tenaciously, that if a common sheep and ancon sheep of either sex unite, the 

 young will be either a perfect ancon, or have no trace of it ; and if two are 

 lambed at the same time, and one be of one variety and the other of the other, 

 each is found to be perfect in its way, without any amalgamation. 



In like manner, in all probability, from some primary accident resulted the 

 peculiar shape of the head and face in most nations as well as in most families ; 

 and hence, too, those enormous prominences on the hinder parts of one or 

 two of the nations at the back of the Cape of Good Hope, of which an in- 

 stance was not long since exhibited in this country with some degree of out- 

 rage on moral feelmg. 



Man, then, is not the only animal in which such variations of form and fea- 

 ture occur; nor the animal in which they occur either most frequently or in 

 the most extraordinary and extravagant manner. 



M. Blumenbach, who has pursued this interesting subject with a liveliness 

 the most entertaining, and a chain of argument the most convincing, has 

 selected the swine genus from among many other quadrupeds that would have 

 answered as well, especially the dog and the sheep, in order to institute a com- 

 parison of this very kind ; and he has completely succeeded in showing that 

 the swine, even in countries where we have historical and undeniable proofs, 

 as especially in America, of its being derived from one common and imported 

 stock, exhibits, in its different varieties, distinctions not only as numerous 

 and astonishing, but, so far as relates to the exterior frame, of the very same 

 kind as are to be met with in the different varieties of the human species. 



In regard to size the Cuba swine, well known, as he observes, to have been 

 imported into that island from Europe, are at the present day double the 

 height and magnitude of the stock from which they were bred. Whence we 

 may well laugh at every argument in favour of more than one human stock 

 or species drawn from the difference of stature in different nations of man. 

 In regard to colour they display at least as great a diversity. In Piedmont 

 the swine are black ; in Bavaria, reddish-brown ; in Normandy, white. Hu- 

 man hair, observes M. Blumenbach, is somewhat different from swine's bris- 

 tles ; yet in the present point of view they may be compared with each other. 

 Fair hair is soft, and of a silky texture ; black hair is coarser, and often 

 woolly. In like manner, among the white swine in Normandy, the bristles 

 on the body are longer and softer than among other swine ; and even those on 

 the back, which are usually stouter than the rest, are flaccid, and cannot be 

 employed by the brush-makers. 



The whole difference between the cranium of a negro and that of a Euro- 

 pean is in no respect greater than that which exists between the cranium of 

 the wild boar and that of the domestic swine. Those who are in possession 

 of Daubenton's drawings of the two, must be sensible of this the first mo* 



