The facts do indeed exist and lie before our very eyes, despite their not having been recognised as such before. All _artificial selection_ practised by man rests on the fact that by means of the selection of individuals having a given character slightly more pronounced than usual, there is gradually produced a general augmentation of this character, which subsequently reaches a point never before attained by any individual {34} of this species. I shall choose an example which seems to me especially clear and simple because only one character has been substantially modified here. The long-tailed variety of domestic cock, now bred in Japan and Corea, owes its existence to skilful selection and not at all to the circumstance that at some period of the race's history a cock with tail-feathers six feet in length suddenly and spasmodically appeared. At the present day even, as Professor Ishikawa of Tokio writes me, the breeders still make extraordinary efforts to increase the length of the tail, and every inch gained adds considerably to the value of the bird. Now nothing has been done here whatever except always to select for purposes of breeding the cocks with the longest feathers; and in this way alone were these feathers, after the lapse of many generations, prolonged to a length far exceeding every previous variation. I once asked a famous dove-fancier, Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier of London, whether it was his opinion that by artificial selection alone a character could be augmented. He thought a long time and finally said: "It is without our power to do anything if the variation which we seek is not presented, but once that variation is given, then I think the augmentation can be effected." And that in fact is the case. If cocks had never existed whose tail-feathers were a little longer than usual the Japanese breed could never have originated; but as the facts are, always the cocks with the longest feathers were chosen from each generation, and these only were bred, and thus a hereditary augmentation of the character in question was effected, which would hardly have been deemed possible.