In Columbia, according to Roulin, there is a breed of nearly hairless cattle, called Pelones; these succeed in their native hot district, but are found too tender for the Cordillera; in this case, however, natural selection determines only the range of the variety. It is obvious that a host of artificial races could never survive in a state of nature;--such as Italian greyhounds,--hairless and almost toothless Turkish dogs,--fantail pigeons, which cannot fly well against a strong wind,--barbs and Polish fowls, with their vision impeded by their eye wattles and great topknots,--hornless bulls and rams, which consequently cannot cope with other males, and thus have a poor chance of leaving offspring,--seedless plants, and many other such cases.
Colour is generally esteemed by the systematic naturalist as unimportant: let us, therefore, see how far it indirectly affects our domestic productions, and how far it would affect them if they were left exposed to the full force of natural selection. In a future chapter I shall have to show that constitutional peculiarities of the strangest kind, entailing liability to the action of certain poisons, are correlated with the colour of the skin. I will here give a single case, on the high authority of Professor Wyman; he informs me that, being surprised at all the pigs in a part of Virginia being black, he made inquiries, and ascertained that these animals feed on the roots of the Lachnanthes tinctoria, which colours their bones pink, and, excepting in the case of the black varieties, causes the hoofs to drop off. Hence, as one of the squatters remarked, "we select the black members of the litter for raising, as they alone have a good chance of living." So that here we have artificial and natural selection working hand in hand. I may add that in the Tarentino the inhabitants keep black sheep alone, because the Hypericum crispum abounds there; and this plant does not injure black sheep, but kills the white ones in about a fortnight's time. (21/6. Dr. Heusinger 'Wochenschrift fur die Hei1kunde' Berlin 1846 s. 279.)
Complexion, and liability to certain diseases, are believed to run together in man and the lower animals. Thus white terriers suffer more than those of any other colour from the fatal distemper. (21/7. Youatt on the 'Dog' page 232.) In North America plum-trees are liable to a disease which Downing (21/8. 'The Fruit-trees of America' 1845 page 270: for peaches page 466.) believes is not caused by insects; the kinds bearing purple fruit are most affected, "and we have never known the green or yellow fruited varieties infected until the other sorts had first become filled with the knots." On the other hand, peaches in North America suffer much from a disease called the "yellows," which seems to be peculiar to that continent, and more than nine-tenths of the victims, "when the disease first appeared, were the yellow-fleshed peaches. The white-fleshed kinds are much more rarely attacked; in some parts of the country never." In Mauritius, the white sugar-canes have of late years been so severely attacked by a disease, that many planters have been compelled to give up growing this variety (although fresh plants were imported from China for trial), and cultivate only red canes. (21/9. 'Proc. Royal Soc. of Arts and Sciences of Mauritius' 1852 page 135.) Now, if these plants had been forced to struggle with other competing plants and enemies, there cannot be a doubt that the colour of the flesh or skin of the fruit, unimportant as these characters are considered, would have rigorously determined their existence.
Liability to the attacks of parasites is also connected with colour. White chickens are certainly more subject than dark-coloured chickens to the "gapes," which is caused by a parasitic worm in the trachea. (21/10. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1856 page 379.) On the other hand, experience has shown that in France the caterpillars which produce white cocoons resist the deadly fungus better than those producing yellow cocoons. (21/11.