has been governed by the strictest selection.
Nevertheless there is no reason to suppose that man intentionally and
methodically made the breeds exactly what they now are. As our horses
became fleeter, and the country more cultivated and smoother, fleeter
fox-hounds were desired and produced, but probably without any one
distinctly foreseeing what they would become. Our pointers and setters, the
latter almost certainly descended from large spaniels, have been greatly
modified in accordance with fashion and the desire for increased speed.
Wolves have become extinct, deer have become rarer, bulls are no longer
baited, and the corresponding breeds of the dog have answered to the
change. But we may feel almost sure that when, for instance, bulls were no
longer baited, no man said to himself, I will now breed my dogs of smaller
size, and thus create the present race. As circumstances changed, men
unconsciously and slowly modified their course of selection.

With race-horses selection for swiftness has been followed methodically,
and our horses can now easily beat their progenitors. The increased size
and different appearance of the English race-horse led a good observer in
India to ask, "Could any one in this year of 1856, looking at our
race-horses, conceive that they were the result of the union of the Arab
horse and the African mare?"[513] This change has, it is probable, been
largely effected through unconscious selection, that is, by the general
wish to breed as fine horses as possible in each generation, combined with
training and high feeding, but without any intention to give to them their
present appearance. According to Youatt,[514] the introduction in Oliver
Cromwell's time of three celebrated Eastern stallions speedily affected the
English breed; "so that Lord Harleigh, one of the old school, complained
that the great horse was fast disappearing." This is an excellent proof how
carefully selection must have been attended to; for without such care, all
traces of so small an infusion of Eastern blood would soon have been
absorbed and {213} lost. Notwithstanding that the climate of England has
never been esteemed particularly favourable to the horse, yet
long-continued selection, both methodical and unconscious, together with
that practised by the Arabs during a still longer and earlier period, has
ended in giving us the best breed of horses in the world. Macaulay[515]
remarks, "Two men whose authority on such subject