40 
SELECTION BY MAN. 
Chap. I. 
most fleeting of characters, have lately been exhibited 
as distinct at onr poultry-shows. 
I think these views further explain what has sometimes 
been noticed—namely, that we know nothing about the 
origin or history of any of our domestic breeds. But, in 
fact, a breed, like a dialect of a language, can hardly be 
said to have had a definite origin. A man preserves and 
breeds from an individual with some slight deviation of 
structure, or takes more care than usual in matching his 
best animals and thus improves them, and the improved 
individuals slowly spread in the immediate neighbour¬ 
hood. But as yet they will hardly have a distinct name, 
and from being only slightly valued, their history will 
be disregarded. When further improved by the same 
slow and gradual process, they will spread more widely, 
and will get recognised as something distinct and valu¬ 
able, and will then probably first receive a provincial 
name. In semi-civilised countries, with little free com¬ 
munication, the spreading and knowledge of any new 
sub-breed will be a slow process. As soon as the points of 
value of the new sub-breed are once fully acknowledged, 
the principle, as I have called it, of unconscious selection 
will always tend,—perhaps more at one period than at 
another, as the breed rises or falls in fashion,—perhaps 
more in one district than in another, according to the 
state of civilization of the inhabitants,—slowly to add to 
the characteristic features of the breed, whatever they 
may be. But the chance will be infinitely small of any 
record having been preserved of such slow, varying, and 
insensible changes. 
I must now say a few words on the circumstances, 
favourable, or the reverse, to man’s power of selection. 
A high degree of variability is obviously favourable, 
as freely giving the materials for selection to work 
on; not that mere individual differences are not amply 
