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Show 114 CONDITIONS AFI~EC'riNG THE well to talk about producing these different races, hut you know very well that if you turned all these bird wild, these Pouters, and Carriers, and so on, they would all return to their primitive stock." This is very commonly assumed to be a fact, and it is an argument that is commonly brought forward as conclusive; but if you will take the trouble to inquire into it rather closely, I think you will find that it is not worth very much. The first question of course is, Do they thus return to the primitive stock? And commonly as the thing is assumed and accepted, it is extremely difficult to get anything like good evidence of it. It is constantly said, for example, that if domesticated I-Iorses are turned wild, as they have been in son1e parts of Asia Minor and South America, that they return at once to the primitive stock from which they were bred. But the first answer that you make to this assumption is, to ask who knows what the primitive stock was j · and the secon<l answer is, that in that case the wild Horses of Asia Minor ought to be exactly like the wild Horses. of South America. If they are both like the same· thing, th~y ought manifestly to be like each other! The best authorities, however, tell you that it is quite· different. The wild Horse of Asia is said to be of a dun colour, with a largish head, and a great many other peculiarities; while the best authorities on the wild Horses of South America tell you that there is nothing of this sort in the wild Horses there; the cut of their heads is very different, and they are commonly chestnut or bay-coloured. It is quite clear, therefore, that as by these .facts there ought to have been two primitive stocks, they go for nothing in support of the as sump-· PERPETUA'fiON OF LIVING BEINGS. 115 tion that races recur to one primitive stock, and so far as this evidence is concerned, it falls to the ground. Suppose for a moment that it were so, and that domesticated races, when turned wild, did return to some common condition, I cannot see that this would prove much more than that similar conditions are likely to produce similar results; and that when you take back domesticated anim~ls into what we call ·natural conditions, you do exactly the same thing as if you carefully undid all the work you had gone through, . for the purpose of bringing the animal from its wild to ·its domesticated state. I do not see anything very wonderful in the fact, if it took all th~t trouble to get it from a wild state, that it should go back into its ·Original state as soon as you remove the conditions which produced the variation to the domesticated form. There is an important fact, however, forcibly brought forward by Mr. Darwin, which has been noticed in connection with the breeding of domesticated pigeons ; and it is, that however different these breeds of pigeons may be from each other, and we have already noticed the great differences in these breeds, that if, among any of those variations, you chance to have a blue pigeon turn up, it will be sure to have the black bars across the wings, which are characteristic of the original wild stock, the Rock Pigeon. Now, this is certainly a very remarkable circumstance; but I do not see myself how it tells very strongly either one way or the other. I think, in fact, that this argument in favour of recurrence to the primitive type might prove a great deal too much for those who so constantly bring it forward. For example, |