where the father left off.

This belief in heredity led naturally to the practice of Intentional
Selection. Good blood and breeding were eagerly sought after in human
marriage. In dealing with plants and animals, selection with a view to
the production of new varieties and the improvement and modification of
species had been practised ever since men began to cultivate them. My
pre-Darwinian uncle knew as well as Darwin that the race-horse and the
dray-horse are not separate creations from the Garden of Eden, but
adaptations by deliberate human selection of the medieval war-horse to
modern racing and industrial haulage. He knew that there are nearly
two hundred different sorts of dogs, all capable of breeding with one
another and of producing cross varieties unknown to Adam. He knew that
the same thing is true of pigeons. He knew that gardeners had spent
their lives trying to breed black tulips and green carnations and
unheard-of orchids, and had actually produced flowers just as strange
to Eve. His quarrel with the Evolutionists was not a quarrel with the
evidence for Evolution: he had accepted enough of it to prove Evolution
ten times over before he ever heard of it. What he repudiated was
cousinship with the ape, and the implied suspicion of a rudimentary
tail, because it was offensive to his sense of his own dignity, and
because he thought that apes were ridiculous, and tails diabolical when
associated with the erect posture. Also he believed that Evolution was
a heresy which involved the destruction of Christianity, of which, as
a member of the Irish Church (the pseudo-Protestant one), he conceived
himself a pillar. But this was only his ignorance; for man may deny his
descent from an ape and be eligible as a churchwarden without being any
the less a convinced Evolutionist.