that you may breed to any degree of nicety you please, and they
found this maxim upon another, which is that some of the
offspring will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in
a greater degree. In the famous Leicestershire breed of sheep,
the object is to procure them with small heads and small legs.
Proceeding upon these breeding maxims, it is evident that we
might go on till the heads and legs were evanescent quantities,
but this is so palpable an absurdity that we may be quite sure
that the premises are not just and that there really is a limit,
though we cannot see it or say exactly where it is. In this case,
the point of the greatest degree of improvement, or the smallest
size of the head and legs, may be said to be undefined, but this
is very different from unlimited, or from indefinite, in Mr
Condorcet's acceptation of the term. Though I may not be able in
the present instance to mark the limit at which further
improvement will stop, I can very easily mention a point at which
it will not arrive. I should not scruple to assert that were the
breeding to continue for ever, the head and legs of these sheep
would never be so small as the head and legs of a rat.

It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals, some of the
offspring will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in
a greater degree, or that animals are indefinitely perfectible.

The progress of a wild plant to a beautiful garden flower is
perhaps more marked and striking than anything that takes place
among animals, yet even here it would be the height of absurdity
to assert that the progress was unlimited or indefinite.

One of the most obvious features of the improvement is the