36 
UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. 
Chap. I. 
India, and Persia, we can, I think, clearly trace the stages 
through which they have insensibly passed, and come to 
differ so greatly from the rock-pigeon. 
Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of 
a course of selection, which may be considered as un¬ 
consciously followed, in so far that the breeders could 
never have expected or even have wished to have pro¬ 
duced the result which ensued—namely, the production 
of two distinct strains. The two flocks of Leicester sheep 
kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, as Mr. Youatt re¬ 
marks, have been purely bred from the original stock of 
Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. There is not 
a suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all ac¬ 
quainted with the subject that the owner of either of 
them has deviated in any one instance from the pure 
blood of Mr. Bakewell’s flock, and yet the difference 
between the sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is 
so great that they have the appearance of being quite 
different varieties.” 
If there exist savages so barbarous as never to think 
of the inherited character of the offspring of their 
domestic animals, yet any one animal particularly useful 
to them, for any special purpose, would be carefully 
preserved during famines and other accidents, to which 
savages are so liable, and such choice animals would thus 
generally leave more offspring than the inferior ones; 
so that in this case there would be a kind of uncon¬ 
scious selection going on. We see the value set on 
animals even by the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, by 
their killing and devouring their old women, in times of 
dearth, as of less value than their dogs. 
In plants the same gradual process of improvement, 
through the occasional preservation of the best indi¬ 
viduals, whether or not sufficiently distinct to be ranked 
at their first appearance as distinct varieties, and whether 
