Darwin's
        Pigeons 
Darwin's Pigeons

    Starting with the ancestral rock pigeon (middle), "pigeon fanciers" by selective artificial breeding have been able to produce a wide variety of morphologically distinct types in a few generations. In Darwin's day, such breeding was done without knowledge of Mendelian principles.
 


Original line drawings from Darwin's "Variation in Animals and Plants under Domestication" (1868); Text material © 2025 by Steven M. Carr