Unconscious Verus Methodical Selection

The laws of correlation of growth will ensure some differences.

But, as a general rule, 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.

The principle of selection has been reduced to methodical practice for scarcely more than 75 years.

Selection is not a modern discovery. I could give several references to the full acknowledgment of the importance of the principle in works of high antiquity.

These prove that the breeding of domestic animals was carefully attended to in ancient times.

Currently, breeders try to use methodical selection to make a new superior strain or sub-breed.

Unconscious Selection results from every one trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals.

• This is more important.

Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers naturally tries to get as good dogs as he can. Afterwards, he breeds them from his own best dogs. But he has no wish of permanently altering the breed.

This process, continued during centuries, would improve and modify any breed.

In some cases, however, unchanged or but little changed individuals of the same breed may be found in less civilised districts, where the breed has been less improved.

King Charles’s spaniel has been unconsciously modified to a large extent since his time.

The setter is directly derived from the spaniel.

• It has probably been slowly altered from it.

But what concerns us is, that the change has been effected unconsciously, gradually, and yet so effectually.

The old Spanish pointer came from Spain even if no native Spanish dog is like our pointer.

By a similar process of selection and careful training the English racehorses have surpassed the fleetness and size of the parent Arab stock.

Breeders have produced two distinct strains even if they never expected or wished it.

• This is illustrated by Youatt

Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess kept their own flocks of Leicester sheep purely bred from the original stock of Mr. Bakewell for more than 50 years.

Yet the resulting flocks is so great that they seem like different varieties.

In plants, the same gradual process of improvement is done through the occasional preservation of the best individuals.

No one would ever expect to get a first-rate heartsease or dahlia from the seed of a wild plant.

The pear has been cultivated in classical times. But it has been a fruit of very inferior quality.

Skilled gardeners have produced such splendid results from such poor materials.

But the art has been simple. The final result has been followed almost unconsciously.

The process was to always cultivate the best known variety, sowing its seeds, and select a slightly better variety.

Many changes in our cultivated plants were thus slowly and unconsciously accumulated.

This is why we cannot recognise the wild parent-stocks of the plants which have been longest cultivated.