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With animals under domestication, but whether in nature I will not venture to say, one sex may lose characters proper to it, and may thus come somewhat to resemble the opposite sex; for instance, the males of some breeds of the fowl have lost their masculine tail-plumes and hackles.
So "Variation under Domestication" dealt with familiar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced "Variation under Nature," which seemed likely enough.
Imagination, full of fire as it is, must always set the pace. So the soul of the Late Palaeolithic hunter, having already in imagination controlled the useful portion of the animal world, was more than half-way on the road to its domestication.
I have frequently observed newly-born lambs on the pampas, and have never failed to be surprised at the extreme imbecility they display in their actions; although this may be due partly to inherited degeneracy caused by domestication.
We also see this in many of the higher animals under domestication, as with horses which have learnt to canter and dogs which point; more especially we observe it along the line of latest development, where equilibrium of settled convictions has not yet been fully attained.
Peacocks have been under domestication for many centuries and are mentioned in the Bible as having been imported into Palestine by Solomon; although the bird is referred to in mythology, the Greeks probably had but little knowledge of it until after the conquests of Alexander.
Every one who has studied cattle-breeding, or turned pigeon-fancier, or "pomologist," must have been struck by the extreme modifiability or plasticity of those kinds of animals and plants which have been subjected to such artificial conditions as are imposed by domestication.
On this view of the origin of many of our domestic animals, we must either give up the belief of the almost universal sterility of distinct species of animals when crossed; or we must look at sterility, not as an indelible characteristic, but as one capable of being removed by domestication.
It was, however, held by Darwin that all domestic chickens were sprung from a single species of Indian jungle fowl. Other scientists have since disputed Darwin's conclusion, but it does not seem to the writer that the origin of domestic fowls from more than one wild variety makes the changes that have taken place under domestication any less remarkable.
Many such races, it is allowed, differ from each other in structure and appearance as widely as do many admitted species; and it is practically very difficult, perhaps impossible, to draw a clear line between races and species. Witness the human races, for instance. Wild species also vary, perhaps about as widely as those of domestication, though in different ways.
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