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 condition; 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 forms, they will be more likely to propagate a variation
exhibited by both parents than that possessed by only one.

There is no organ of the body of an animal which may not, and does not,
occasionally, vary more or less from the normal type; and there is no
variation which may not be transmitted and which, if selectively