If we turn to varieties, produced, or supposed to have been produced, under domestication, we are still involved in some doubt.

For when it is stated, for instance, that certain South American indigenous domestic dogs do not readily unite with European dogs, the explanation which will occur to everyone, and probably the true one, is that they are descended from aboriginally distinct species.

Nevertheless the perfect fertility of so many domestic races, differing widely from each other in appearance, for instance, those of the pigeon, or of the cabbage, is a remarkable fact; more especially when we reflect how many species there are, which, though resembling each other most closely, are utterly sterile when intercrossed.

Several considerations, however, render the fertility of domestic varieties less remarkable.

In the first place, it may be observed that the amount of external difference between two species is no sure guide to their degree of mutual sterility, so that similar differences in the case of varieties would be no sure guide.