less civilised districts, where
the breed has been less improved. There is reason to believe that King
Charles' spaniel has been unconsciously modified to a large extent
since the time of that monarch. Some highly competent authorities are
convinced that the setter is directly derived from the spaniel, and
has probably been slowly altered from it. It is known that the English
pointer has been greatly changed within the last century, and in this
case the change has, it is believed, been chiefly effected by crosses
with the foxhound; but what concerns us is, that the change has been
effected unconsciously and gradually, and yet so effectually that,
though the old Spanish pointer certainly came from Spain, Mr. Borrow
has not seen, as I am informed by him, any native dog in Spain like our
pointer.

By a similar process of selection, and by careful training, English
race-horses have come to surpass in fleetness and size the parent Arabs,
so that the latter, by the regulations for the Goodwood Races, are
favoured in the weights which they carry. Lord Spencer and others have
shown how the cattle of England have increased in weight and in early
maturity, compared with the stock formerly kept in this country. By
comparing the accounts given in various old treatises of the former
and present state of carrier and tumbler pigeons in Britain, India,
and Persia, we can 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 unconscious, in so far that the
breeders could never have expected, or even wished, to produce the
result which ensued--namely, the production of the distinct strains. The
two flocks of Leicester sheep kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, as
Mr. Youatt remarks, "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 acquainted 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
particula