If a variation which approaches the nature of a monstrosity can strive thus forcibly to reproduce itself, it is not wonderful that less aberrant modifications should tend to be preserved even more strongly; and the history of the Ancon sheep is, in this respect, particularly instructive.  With the “’cuteness” characteristic of their nation, the neighbours of the Massachusetts farmer imagined it would be an excellent thing if all his sheep were imbued with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by Nature upon the newly-arrived ram; and they advised Wright to kill the old patriarch of his fold, and install the Ancon ram in his place.  The result justified their sagacious anticipations, and coincided very nearly with what occurred to the progeny of Gratio Kelleia.  The young lambs were almost always either pure Ancons, or pure ordinary sheep.[62] But when sufficient Ancon sheep were obtained to interbreed with one another, it was found that the offspring was always pure Ancon.  Colonel Humphreys, in fact, states that he was acquainted with only “one questionable case of a contrary nature.”  Here, then, is a remarkable and well-established instance, not only of a very distinct race being established per saltum, but of that race breeding “true” at once, and showing no mixed forms, even when crossed with another breed.

By taking care to select Ancons of both sexes, for breeding from, it thus became easy to establish an extremely well-marked race; so peculiar that, even when herded with other sheep, it was noted that the Ancons kept together.  And there is every reason to believe that the existence of this breed might have been indefinitely protracted; but the introduction of the Merino sheep, which were not only very superior to the Ancons in wool and meat, but quite as quiet and orderly, led to the complete neglect of the new breed, so that, in 1813, Colonel Humphreys found it difficult to obtain the specimen, whose skeleton was presented to Sir Joseph Banks.  We believe that, for many years, no remnant of it has existed in the United States.

Gratio Kelleia was not the progenitor of a race of six-fingered men, as Seth Wright’s ram became a nation of Ancon sheep, though the tendency of the variety to perpetuate itself appears to have been fully as strong, in the one case as in the other.  And the reason of the difference is not far to seek.  Seth Wright took care not to weaken the Ancon blood by matching his Ancon ewes with any but males of the same variety, while Gratio Kelleia’s sons were too far removed from the patriarchal times to intermarry with their sisters; and his grandchildren seem not to have been attracted by their six-fingered cousins.  In other words, in the one example a race was produced, because, for several generations, care was taken to select both parents of the breeding stock, from animals exhibiting a tendency to vary in the same direction; while, in the other, no race was evolved, because no such selection was exercised.  A race is a propagated variety; and as, by the laws of reproduction, offspring tend to assume the parental form, they will be more likely to propagate a variation exhibited by both parents than that possessed by only one.