considerable flock of this variety, and a large number of them were
spread throughout Massachusetts. Most unfortunately, however--I suppose
it was because they were so common--nobody took enough notice of them to
preserve their skeletons; and although Colonel Humphreys states that he
sent a skeleton to the President of the Royal Society at the same time
that he forwarded his paper, I am afraid that the variety has entirely
disappeared; for a short time after these sheep had become prevalent in
that district, the Merino sheep were introduced; and as their wool was
much more valuable, and as they were a quiet race of sheep, and showed
no tendency to trespass or jump over fences, the Otter breed of sheep,
the wool of which was inferior to that of the Merino, was gradually
allowed to die out.

You see that these facts illustrate perfectly well what may be done if
you take care to breed from stocks that are similar to each other. After
having got a variation, if, by crossing a variation with the original
stock, you multiply that variation, and then take care to keep that
variation distinct from the original stock, and make them breed
together,--then you may almost certainly produce a race whose tendency
to continue the variation is exceedingly strong.

This is what is called "selection"; and it is by exactly the same
process as that by which Seth Wright bred his Ancon sheep, that
our breeds of cattle, dogs, and fowls, are obtained. There are some
possibilities of exception, but still, speaking broadly, I may say that
this is the way in which all our varied races of domestic animals have
arisen; and you must understand that it is not one peculiarity or one
characteristic alone in which animals may vary. There is not a single
peculiarity or characteristic of any kind, bodily or mental, in which
offspring may not vary to a certain extent from the parent and other
animals.

Among ourselves this is well known. The simplest physical peculiarity is
mostly reproduced. I know a case of a man whose wife has the lobe of
one of her ears a little flattened. An ordinary observer might scarcely
notice it, and yet every one of her children has an approximation to the
same peculiarity to some extent. If you look at the other extreme, too,
the gravest diseases, such as gout, scrofula, and consumption, may be
handed down with just the same certainty and persistence as we noticed
in the perpetuation of the bandy legs of the Ancon sheep.