It is certain that if these animals were ever subject to artificial isolation for the purpose of establishing their breed, the process must have ceased a long time ago, seeing that there is no memory or tradition of its occurrence. Now this proves that, however the breed may have originated, it has been able to maintain its many and highly peculiar characters for a number of generations without the help of selection, either natural or artificial. This is the first point to be clear upon. Be its origin what it may, we know that this breed has proved capable of perpetuating itself with uniform "constancy" for a number of generations after the artificial selection has ceased--supposing such a process ever to have occurred. And this certain fact that artificial selection, even if it was originally needed to establish the type, has not been needed to perpetuate the type, is a full answer to the supposed objection. For, in view of this fact, it is immaterial what the origin of the niata breed may have been. In the present connexion, the importance of this breed consists in its proving the subsequent "stability" of an almost monstrous form, continued through a long series of generations by the force of heredity alone, without the aid of any form of selection. The next point is, that not only is a seeming objection to the illustration thus removed, but that, if we do entertain the question of origin, and if we do suppose the origin of these cattle to have been in a congenital "sport," afterwards multiplied by artificial isolation, we actually strengthen our general argument by increasing the importance of this particular illustration. For the illustration then becomes available to show how indifferent specific characters may sometimes originate in merely individual sports, which, if not immediately extinguished by free intercrossing, will perpetuate themselves by the unaided force of heredity. But this is a point to which we shall recur in the ensuing chapter.