Inquiries into human faculty and its development / by Francis Galton.

Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inquiries into human faculty and its development / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    resting without rolling back. It aflfords a temporary sticking point in the forward progress of evolution. The causes that check the unlimited improvement of highly-bred animals, so long as the race remains unchanged, are many and absolute. In the first place there is an increasing delicacy of constitution ; the growing fineness of limb and structure end, after a few. generations, in fragility. Overbred animals have little stamina, they resemble in this respect the weedy colts so often reared from first-class racers. One can perhaps see in a general way why this should be so. Each indivi- dual is the outcome of a vast number of organic elements of the most various species, just as some nation might be the outcome of a vast number of castes of individuals, each caste monopolising a special pursuit. Banish a number of the humbler castes—the bakers, the bricklayers, and the smiths, and the nation would soon come to grief. This is what is done in high breeding; certain qualities are bred for, and the rest are diminished as far as possible, but they cannot be dispensed with entirely. The next difiiculty lies in the diminished fertility of highly-bred animals. It is not improbable that its cause is of the same character as that of the delicacy of their constitution. Together with infertility is combined some degree of sexual indifference, or when passion is shown, it is not unfrequently for some specimen of a coarser type. This is certainly the case with horses and with dogs.