The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication

Darwin's 'big book': a masterpiece of nineteenth-century scientific investigation and a key text in the development of Darwin's thought.

Charles Darwin (Author)

9781108014229, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 June 2010

424 pages, 43 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.4 cm, 0.54 kg

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) first published this work in 1868 in two volumes. The book began as an expansion of the first two chapters of On the Origin of Species: 'Variation under Domestication' and 'Variation under Nature', and it developed into one of his largest works; Darwin referred to it as his 'big book'. Volume 1 deals with the variations introduced into species as a result of domestication, through changes in climate, diet, breeding and an absence of predators. He began with an examination of dogs and cats, comparing them with their wild counterparts, and moved on to investigate horses and asses; pigs, cattle, sheep, and goats; domestic rabbits; domestic pigeons; fowl; and finally cultivated plants. The work is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century scientific investigation; it is a key text in the development of Darwin's own thought and of the wider discipline of evolutionary biology.

Introduction
1. Domestic dogs and cats
2. Horses and asses
3. Pigs, cattle, sheep, goats
4. Domestic rabbits
5. Domestic pigeons
6. Pigeons continued
7. Fowls
8. Ducks, goose, peacock, turkey, guinea-fowl, canary-bird, gold-fish, hive-bees, silk-moths
9. Cultivated plants: cereal and culinary plants
10. Plants continued: fruits, ornamental trees, flower
11. On bud-variation, and on certain anomalous modes of reproduction and variation.

Subject Areas: Evolution [PSAJ]