a pair of
setters, born in India, which perfectly resembled their Scotch parents: he
raised several litters from them in Delhi, taking the most stringent
precautions to prevent a cross, but he never succeeded, though this was
only the second generation in India, in obtaining a single young dog like
its parents in size or make; their nostrils were more contracted, their
noses more pointed, their size inferior, and their limbs more slender. This
remarkable tendency to rapid deterioration in European dogs subjected to
the climate of India, may perhaps partly be accounted for by the tendency
to reversion to a primordial condition which many animals exhibit, as we
shall see in a future chapter, when exposed to new conditions of life.

Some of the peculiarities characteristic of the several breeds of the dog
have probably arisen suddenly, and, though strictly inherited, may be
called monstrosities; for instance, the shape of the legs and body in the
turnspit of Europe and India; the shape of the head and the under-hanging
jaw in the bull and pug-dog, so alike in this one respect and so unlike in
all others. A peculiarity suddenly arising, and therefore in one sense
deserving to be called a monstrosity, may, however, be increased and fixed
by man's selection. We can hardly doubt that long-continued training, as
with the greyhound in coursing hares, as with water-dogs in swimming--and
the want of exercise, in the case of lapdogs--must have produced some
direct effect on their structure and instincts. But we shall immediately
see that the most potent cause of change has probably been the selection,
both methodical and unconscious, of slight individual differences,--the
{39} latter kind of selection resulting from the occasional preservation,
during hundreds of generations, of those individual dogs which were the
most useful to man for certain purposes and under certain conditions of
life. In a future chapter on Selection I shall show that even barbarians
attend closely to the qualities of their dogs. This unconscious selection
by man would lie aided by a kind of natural selection; for the dogs of
savages have partly to gain their own subsistence; for instance, in
Australia, as we hear from Mr. Nind,[77] the dogs are sometimes compelled
by want to leave their masters and provide for themselves; but in a few
days they generally return. And we may infer that dogs of different shapes,
sizes, and habits, would have best chance of survi