II 
ON THE TENDENCY OF VARIETIES, ETC. 
31 
ever 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 steps towards such inferior forms would have 
led to the rapid extinction of the race ; still less could they 
now exist in competition with their wild allies. The great 
speed but slight endurance of the racehorse, the unwieldly 
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 under 
favourable circumstances might each gradually lose those 
extreme qualities which would never be called into action, 
and in a few generations 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 its organisation, the animal can alone continue 
to live. Domestic varieties, when turned wild, must return 
to something near the type of the original wild stock, or 
become altogether extinct . 1 
We see, then, that no inferences as to the permanence of 
varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the ob- 
servations of those occurring among domestic animals. The 
two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance 
of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure 
not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, 
irregular, artificial ; they are subject to variations which 
never occur, and never can occur, in a state of nature : their 
very existence depends altogether on human care — so far are 
many of them removed from that just proportion of faculties, 
that true balance of organisation, by means of which alone an 
animal left to its own resources can preserve its existence and 
continue its race. 
Lamarck's Hypothesis very different from that now advanced 
The hypothesis of Lamarck — that progressive changes in 
species have been produced by the attempts of animals to 
1 That is, they will vary, and the variations which tend to adapt them to 
the wild state, and therefore approximate them to wild animals, will be pre- 
served. Those individuals which do not vary sufficiently will perish. 
