No onewould ever expect to get a first-rate heartsease or dahlia from the seedof a wild plant

Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of a course ofselection, which may be considered as unconsciously followed, in sofar that the breeders could never have expected or even have wishedto have produced the result which ensued-namely, the production oftwo distinct strains. The two flocks of Leicester sheep kept by MrBuckley and Mr Burgess, as Mr Youatt remarks, have been purely bredfrom the original stock of Mr Bakewell for upwards of fifty years.

Thereis not a suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted withthe subject that the owner of either of them has deviated in any oneinstance from the pure blood of Mr Bakewell's flock, and yet thedifference between the sheep possessed by these two gentlemen isso great that they have the appearance of being quite differentvarietiesIf there exist savages so barbarous as never to think of the inheritedcharacter of the offspring of their domestic animals, yet any one animalparticularly useful to them, for any special purpose, would be carefullypreserved during famines and other accidents, to which savages areso liable, and such choice animals would thus generally leave moreoffspring than the inferior ones, so that in this case there would be akind of unconscious selection going on. We see the value set onanimals even by the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, by their killing anddevouring their old women, in times of dearth, as of less value thantheir dogsIn plants the same gradual process of improvement, through theoccasional preservation of the best individuals, whether or notsufficiently distinct to be ranked at their first appearance as distinctvarieties, and whether or not two or more species or races have becomeblended together by crossing, may plainly be recognised in theincreased size and beauty which we now see in the varieties of theheartsease, rose, pelargonium, dahlia, and other plants, whencompared with the older varieties or with their parent-stocks. No onewould ever expect to get a first-rate heartsease or dahlia from the seedof a wild plant. No one would expect to raise a first-rate melting pearfrom the seed of a wild pear, though he might succeed from a poorseedling growing wild, if it had come from a garden-stock The pear,though cultivated in classical times, appears, from Pliny's descriptionto have been a fruit of very inferior quality. I have seen great surpriseexpressed in horticultural works at the wonderful skill of gardeners, inhaving produced such splendid results from such poor materials; butthe art, I cannot doubt, has been simple, and, as far as the final resultis concerned, has been followed almost unconsciously. It has consistedin always cultivating the best known variety, sowing its seeds, andwhen a slightly better variety has chanced to appear, selecting it, andso onwards. But the gardeners of the classical period, who cultivatedthe best pear they could procure, never thought what splendid fruit weshould eat; though we owe our excellent fruit, in some small degreeto their having naturally chosen and preserved the best varieties theycoud anywhere find

A large amount of change in our cultivated plants, thus slowly andunconsciously accumulated, explains, as I believe, the well-known factthat in a vast number of cases we cannot recognise, and therefore donot know, the wild parent-stocks of the plants which have been longestcultivated in our flower and kitchen gardens. If it has taken centuries orthousands of years to improve or modify most of our plants up to theirpresent standard of usefulness to man, we can understand how it isthat neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other regionhabited by quite uncivilised man, has afforded us a single plant worthculture. It is not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by astrange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, butthat the native plants have not been improved by continued selectionup to a standard of perfection comparable with that given to the plantsin countries anciently civilisedIn regard to the domestic animals kept by uncivilised man, it shouldnot be overlooked that they almost always have to struggle for theirown food, at least during certain seasons. And in two countries verydifferently circumstanced, individuals of the same species, havingslightly different constitutions or structure, would often succeed betterin the one country than in the other, and thus by a process of naturalselection, as will hereafter be more fully explained, two sub-breedsmight be formed. This, perhaps, partly explains what has beerremarked by some authors, namely, that the varieties kept by savageshave more of the character of species than the varieties kept in civilisedcountries

On the view here given of the all-important part which selection byman has played, it becomes at once obvious, how it is that our domesticraces show adaptation in their structure or in their habits to mans wantsor fancies. We can, I think, further understand the frequently abnormalcharacter of our domestic races, and likewise their differences beingso great in extemal characters and relatively so slight in intemal partsor organs. Man can hardly select, or only with much difficulty, anydeviation of structure excepting such as is externally visible, and indeedhe rarely cares for what is intemal. He can never act by selectionexcepting on variations which are first given to him in some slightdegree by nature. No man would ever try to make a fantail, till he sawa pigeon with a tail developed in some slight degree in an unusualmanner, or a pouter till he saw a pigeon with a crop of somewhatunusual size, and the more abnormal or unusual any character waswhen it first appeared, the more likely it would be to catch his attentionBut to use such an expression as trying to make a fantail, is, I have nodoubt, in most cases, utterly incorrect. The man who first selected apigeon with a slightly larger tail, never dreamed what the descendantsof that pigeon would become through long-continued, partlyunconscious and partly methodical selection. Perhaps the parent birdof all fantails had only fourteen tail-feathers somewhat expanded, likethe present Java fantail, or like individual of other and distinct breeds.in which as many as seventeen tail-feathers have been countedPerhaps the first pouter-pigeon did not inflate its crop much more thanthe turbit now does the upper part of its oesophagus, -a habit whichis disregarded by all fanciers, as it is not one of the points of the breed