17 
31 . By the same valuable process of methodical selection, 
there is no doubt that many permanent varieties of domes- 
ticated animals might be formed, if breeders only thought it 
worth their time and trouble. A mare has been known (e. g.) 
to produce three foals successively without tails ; so that, “ if 
necessary,” says Mr. Darwin (and I perfectly believe him), “ a 
tailless race of horses might have been formed.” Again, in 
Paraguay, horses are occasionally born with hair like that on 
the head of a Negro; and the same peculiarity is transmitted 
even to half-breeds. These animals are generally destroyed at 
their birth ; but if they were bred under careful selection, with 
a view to their permanent establishment as a separate variety, 
nothing would be easier than to obtain a new breed of horses 
different from anything we have ever yet seen in the world. 
32. Facts of a similar nature might easily be brought 
forward from other departments of the animal kingdom. Who 
can look among pigeons — at the carrier, the pouter, the fan- 
tail, and the tumbler,— or at Polish, Hamburg, and Cochin 
China fowls, — without at once perceiving that all these speci- 
mens of domesticated birds must have been either slowly 
originated by a methodical selection of similar pairs, pro- 
pagated until their respective peculiarities became established, 
or else more rapidly produced (as in the case of the Ancon 
sheep) by judicious methods of weeding, after some un- 
expectedly abnormal specimens had arisen which were found 
capable of transmitting their own exceptional characteristics ? 
33. But the question we now have to decide lies in the 
application of these phenomena to the human race. What 
we wish to know is, whether this principle of methodical 
selection can afford us any probable theory for the origin of 
the Negroes. 
34. That, regarded from a merely scientific point of view, 
such a theory would be possible, seems very clear. But can 
we regard the question in this scientific manner ? Are we at 
liberty to assume it as in the least degree probable, that at 
any period of the world there could ever have existed a state 
of society in which so artificial and natural a system of human 
generation was practised ? From all the evidences which are 
furnished, either by history or experience, no principle has 
ever yet regulated the choice of pairs, and the propagation of 
the human species, but the working of natural affections, or 
of self-willed interests. Now of natural affections, it is simply 
absurd to say that they could ever have been guided or coerced 
mechanically, according to the required laws of methodical 
selection. The bare notion of any human beings, thus arti- 
vol. v. c 
