how extremely alike the flowers; how unlike the flowers of the
heartsease are, and how alike the leaves; how much the fruit of the
different kinds of gooseberries differ in size, colour, shape, and
hairiness, and yet the flowers present very slight differences. It is
not that the varieties which differ largely in some one point do not
differ at all in other points; this is hardly ever, perhaps never, the
case. The laws of correlation of growth, the importance of which should
never be overlooked, will ensure some differences; but, as a general
rule, I cannot doubt that the continued selection of slight variations,
either in the leaves, the flowers, or the fruit, will produce races
differing from each other chiefly in these characters.
It may be objected that the principle of selection has been reduced to
methodical practice for scarcely more than three-quarters of a century;
it has certainly been more attended to of late years, and many
treatises have been published on the subject; and the result, I may
add, has been, in a corresponding degree, rapid and important. But it
is very far from true that the principle is a modern discovery. I could
give several references to the full acknowledgment of the importance of
the principle in works of high antiquity. In rude and
barbarous periods of English history choice animals were often
imported, and laws were passed to prevent their exportation: the
destruction of horses under a certain size was ordered, and this may be
compared to the roguing of plants by nurserymen. The principle of
selection I find distinctly given in an ancient Chinese encyclop dia.
Explicit rules are laid down by some of the Roman classical writers.
From passages in Genesis, it is clear that the colour of domestic
animals was at that early period attended to. Savages now sometimes
cross their dogs with wild canine animals, to improve the breed, and
they formerly did so, as is attested by passages in Pliny. The savages
in South Africa match their draught cattle by colour, as do some of the
Esquimaux their teams of dogs. Livingstone shows how much good domestic
breeds are valued by the negroes of the interior of Africa who have not
associated with Europeans. Some of these facts do not show actual
selection, but they show that the breeding of domestic animals was
carefully attended to in ancient times, and is now attended to by the
lowest savages. It would, indeed, have been a strange fact, had
attention not been paid to breeding, for the inheritance of good and
bad qualities is so obvious.
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