What methodical selection has effected for our animals is sufficiently proved, as already remarked, by our Exhibitions. So greatly were the sheep belonging to some of the earlier breeders, such as Bakewell and Lord Western, changed, that many persons could not be persuaded that they had not been crossed. Our pigs, as Mr. Corringham remarks (20/19. 'Journal Royal Agricultural Soc.' volume 6 page 22.) during the last twenty years have undergone, through rigorous selection together with crossing, a complete metamorphosis. The first exhibition for poultry was held in the Zoological Gardens in 1845; and the improvement effected since that time has been great. As Mr. Bailey, the great judge, remarked to me, it was formerly ordered that the comb of the Spanish cock should be upright, and in four or five years all good birds had upright combs; it was ordered that the Polish cock should have no comb or wattles, and now a bird thus furnished would be at once disqualified; beards were ordered, and out of fifty-seven pens lately (1860) exhibited at the Crystal Palace, all had beards. So it has been in many other cases. But in all cases the judges order only what is occasionally produced and what can be improved and rendered constant by selection. The steady increase in weight during the last few years in our fowls, turkeys, ducks, and geese is notorious; "six-pound ducks are now common, whereas four pounds was formerly the average." As the time required to make a change has not often been recorded, it may be worth mentioning that it took Mr. Wicking thirteen years to put a clean white head on an almond tumbler's body, "a triumph," says another fancier, "of which he may be justly proud." (20/20. 'Poultry Chronicle' volume 2 1855 page 596.) Mr. Tollet, of Betley Hall, selected cows, and especially bulls, descended from good milkers, for the sole purpose of improving his cattle for the production of cheese; he steadily tested the milk with the lactometer, and in eight years he increased, as I was informed by him, the product in proportion of four to three. Here is a curious case (20/21. Isid. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire 'Hist. Nat. Gen.' tome 3 page 254.) of steady but slow progress, with the end not as yet fully attained: in 1784 a race of silkworms was introduced into France, in which one hundred in the thousand failed to produce white cocoons; but now after careful selection during sixty-five generations, the proportion of yellow cocoons has been reduced to thirty-five in the thousand.