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The doctrine of the origin of our several domestic races from several aboriginal stocks, has been carried to an absurd extreme by some authors. They believe that every race which breeds true, let the distinctive characters be ever so slight, has had its wild prototype. At this rate there must have existed at least a score of species of wild cattle, as many sheep, and several
in Europe alone, and several even within Great Britain. One author believes that there formerly existed
→in Great Britain
eleven wild species of sheep peculiar to
When we bear in mind that Britain has now
one peculiar mammal, and France but few distinct from those of
and
so with Hungary, Spain, &c., but that each of these kingdoms possesses several peculiar breeds of cattle, sheep, &c., we must admit that many domestic breeds
originated in Europe; for whence
they
been
→so large a
So it is in India. Even in the case of the
of the
→whole
world, which I
admit
descended from several wild species,
cannot
that there has been an immense amount of inherited
→for who will
believe that animals closely resembling the Italian greyhound, the bloodhound, the bull-dog,
Blenheim spaniel, &c. — so unlike all wild Canidæ — ever existed
in a state of nature? It has often been loosely said that all our races of dogs have been produced by the crossing of a few aboriginal species; but by crossing we can
forms in some degree intermediate between their parents; and if we account for our several domestic races by this process, we must admit the former existence of the most extreme forms, as the Italian greyhound, bloodhound, bull-dog, &c., in the wild state. Moreover, the possibility of making
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