Some authors have drawn a wide distinction between artificial and natural breeds; although in extreme cases the distinction is plain, in many other cases it is arbitrary; the difference depending chiefly on the kind of selection which has been applied. Artificial breeds are those which have been intentionally improved by man; they frequently have an unnatural appearance, and are especially liable to lose their characters through reversion and continued variability. The so-called natural breeds, on the other hand, are those which are found in semi-civilised countries, and which formerly inhabited separate districts in nearly all the European kingdoms. They have been rarely acted on by man's intentional selection; more frequently by unconscious selection, and partly by natural selection, for animals kept in semi-civilised countries have to provide largely for their own wants. Such natural breeds will also have been directly acted on by the differences, though slight, in the surrounding conditions.
There is a much more important distinction between our several breeds, namely, in some having originated from a strongly-marked or semi-monstrous deviation of structure, which, however, may subsequently have been augmented by selection; whilst others have been formed in so slow and insensible a manner, that if we could see their early progenitors we should hardly be able to say when or how the breed first arose. From the history of the racehorse, greyhound, gamecock, etc., and from their general appearance, we may feel nearly confident that they were formed by a slow process of improvement; and we know that this has been the case with the carrier-pigeon, as well as with some other pigeons. On the other hand, it is certain that the ancon and mauchamp breeds of sheep, and almost certain that the niata cattle, turnspit, and pug-dogs, jumper and frizzled fowls, short-faced tumbler pigeons, hook- billed ducks, etc., suddenly appeared in nearly the same state as we now see them. So it has been with many cultivated plants. The frequency of these cases is likely to lead to the false belief that natural species have often originated in the same abrupt manner. But we have no evidence of the appearance, or at least of the continued procreation, under nature, of abrupt modifications of structure; and various general reasons could be assigned against such a belief.
On the other hand, we have abundant evidence of the constant occurrence under nature of slight individual differences of the most diversified kinds; and we are thus led to conclude that species have generally originated by the natural selection of extremely slight differences. This process may be strictly compared with the slow and gradual improvement of the racehorse, greyhound, and gamecock. As every detail of structure in each species has to be closely adapted to its habits of life, it will rarely happen that one part alone will be modified; but, as was formerly shown, the co-adapted modifications need not be absolutely simultaneous. Many variations, however, are from the first connected by the law of correlation. Hence it follows that even closely-allied species rarely or never differ from one another by one character alone; and the same remark is to a certain extent applicable to domestic races; for these, if they differ much, generally differ in many respects.
Some naturalists boldly insist (28/1. Godron 'De l'Espece' 1859 tome 2 page 44 etc.) that species are absolutely distinct productions, never passing by intermediate links into one another; whilst they maintain that domestic varieties can always be connected either with one another or with their parent-forms. But if we could always find the links between the several breeds of the dog, horse, cattle, sheep, pigs, etc., there would not have been such incessant doubts whether they were descended from one or several species. The greyhound genus, if such a term may be used, cannot be closely connected with any other breed, unless, perhaps, we go back to the ancient Egyptian monuments.