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Nature's Fancy: Charles Darwin and the Breeding of Pigeons
Author(s): James A. Secord
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Source: Isis, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 162-186
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
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Fancy:
Nature's
and
Darwin
Charles
Breeding
of
the
Pigeons
By James A. Secord*
We each see with a different pair of eyes, and each has
peculiarfancies to beguile.
-B.
P.
BRENT,
in the Cottage Gardener, 1856
IN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES CharlesDarwindrew upon his knowledge
of the whole range of natural history, turning all the relevant lines of evidence
so that they pointed to evolution by natural selection. But Darwin's reach
extended even further, into fields usually considered to be outside the realm of
natural science. Malthus and political economy spring to mind, and an extensive
literature is devoted to his interest in such subjects. I But if in part the result of
readings in economics and philosophy, the Origin is also a discourse on cabbages,
cows, rabbits, and sheep-the products of domestication. The analogy between
artificial and natural selection is central to the Origin. To follow out its ramifications Darwin left his accustomed world of natural history, with its characteristic
intellectual approaches and institutions, and ventured instead into one inhabited
by those knowledgeable about the breeding of plants and animals.
"Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have, after
deliberation, taken up domestic pigeons."2 Darwin's words from the Origin
introduce a long section on fancy pigeons, his most completely documented
example of the analogy of artificial selection. For three years, from 1855 until he
*
Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
08540.
I wish to thank Gerald L. Geison, Nicholas Russell, Janet Browne, Peter Dear, and two
anonymous referees for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Besides providing several useful
suggestions, William Montgomery of the Library of the American Philosophical Society made
available many unpublished materials collected for the Darwin correspondence project. Permission
to quote from manuscripts in their possession has been granted by the American Philosophical
Society; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Master and Fellows of Christ's College,
Cambridge; the Library of the New York Botanical Gardens; and Yale University Library.
'See esp. Robert M. Young, "Malthus and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological
and Social Theory," Past and Present, 1969, 8:109-145; Sandra Herbert, "Darwin, Malthus, and
Selection," Journal of the History of Biology, 1971, 4:209-217; and for a review and bibliography,
Steven Shapin and Barry Barnes, "Darwin and Social Darwinism: Purity and History," in Barry
Barnes and Steven Shapin, eds., Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture (Beverly
Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), pp. 125-142. For a more general introduction to the evolutionary debates
in the nineteenth century, see Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Revolution (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1979).
2Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, intro. by Ernst Mayr (facs. of 1st ed. of 1859; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964), p. 20.
ISIS, 1981, 72 (262)
163
fiiSou~~~~~~~~~~
......
Above: Five varietiesof fancy pigeon shown at a meeting of the PhiloperisteronSociety
in 1851, fromthe IllustratedLondonNews, 1851, 18:48. Fromleft to right.jacobin, carrier,
jacobin, pouter, AlmondTumbler,YellowMottle.Thelarge birdin the center is one of
Mr. Bult'spouters, seen by Darwinin 1856. Below: "Pigeons,"fromPunch,or the London
Charivari,1851, 20:56. Thispictureparodies the one fromthe IllustratedLondonNews.
164
JAMES A. SECORD
began writing the Origin in the summer of 1858, Darwin entered with enthusiasm
on forays into the world of the English pigeon fanciers, joining their clubs,
breeding his own birds, and reading most of the published literature. While his
basic orientation-in both social and intellectual terms-always remained that of
a naturalist, Darwin became one of the few to study the productions of man with
the scientific care usually reserved for the productions of wild nature. In his
detailed examination of the end results of artificial selection and through his
exposure to the standards and social institutions that had governed the process of
selection, Darwin was engaged on the program of visual reeducation that had
begun with his study of the barnacles. By demonstrating the existence of the
smallest differences in creatures that looked identical to the untrained observer,
he hoped to show his readers that wild nature could be seen with the practiced eye
of a pigeon fancier. In addition, he obtained data on crossing, reversion, and
correlation of parts-essential information for his theory of inheritance.
In evaluating the role of the pigeon in Darwin's species work, the present discussion necessarily (and purposefully) avoids both of the grand themes of recent
Darwiniana, the formulation of his theory of natural selection in the late 1830s
and the reception of that theory after the publication of the Origin in 1859.
Twenty-odd years intervened between conception and reception, years in which
Darwin was active in publication and research. The present study illustrates the
sort of subjects that engaged his attention during this essential phase of his
career.
DARWIN AND DOMESTICATION
By the end of 1854 Darwin had at last finished his monographs on the barnacles
and was ready to begin a sustained assault on the problem of species, one that he
had investigated intermittently ever since returning from the Beagle voyage in
1836. Darwin began in his usual methodical fashion, assembling the relevant
items from his notebooks, his correspondence, and his collection of annotated
and abstracted books and articles. His original plan, as is well known, was to
publish a large work in several volumes. This would have undoubtedly appeared
in the early 1860s if he had not been interrupted by the famous letter from Alfred
Russel Wallace that led him to condense the massive tome into the "abstract of an
essay," the 1859 Origin of Species.3
Darwin always viewed the study of domestic animals and plants as an essential
introduction to his theory of evolution. His manuscript essays of 1842 and 1844
opened with the subject, as did the unfinished long manuscript Natural Selection
and the Origin itself. And when the Origin was finished, the first of a projected
series of fully documented expansions appeared in 1868 as the two-volume
Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication.4 As with so much of
Darwin's work, this interest in domestication had its origins in the earth sciences.
Darwin felt he was "following the example of Lyell in Geology," extrapolating
3An excellent, although brief, discussion of Darwin's working methods during this period is
provided by Robert C. Stauffer, ed., Charles Darwin's Natural Selection, Being the Second Part of His
Big Species Book from 1856 to 1858 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 5-7; also
Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter,
Vol. I (London: John Murray, 1887), pp. 67-114.
4Charles Darwin, Foundations of the Origin of Species: Two Essays Written in 1842 and 1844
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1909); Origin, pp. 7-43; C. Darwin, The Variation of Animals
and Plants under Domestication (London: John Murray, 1868).
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
165
from observable events to the unseen. In the problem of species this rigorous
actualism led directly to an interest in domesticated animals: the selecting hand,
invisible in nature, was manifested for Darwin in man's actions as a breeder.
Darwin always maintained that the analogy with domestication had played an
essential role in his discovery of natural selection. Given the importance of his
bird specimens in his conversion to evolution, it seems highly fitting that he
should have combined artificial selection and ornithology in a study of domesticated pigeons.5
It is hardly surprising, then, that Darwin returned to his species work in late
1854 and early 1855 with a detailed study of man as a selecting agent. But initially
he did not intend to focus on the fancy pigeons. In March of 1855 we find Darwin
already busy with cabbages and ducks; he was only just beginning his serious
study of the pigeon. "I am hard at work at my notes collecting and comparing
them," he wrote his cousin William Darwin Fox, "in order in some two or three
years to write a book with all the facts and arguments, which I can collect, for and
versus the immutability of species."6 At this point Darwin knew relatively little
about pigeons. Although several members of the Darwin family had kept the
birds,7 he had to confess to Fox that he could not remember so much as having
seen a young pigeon. Occasionally Darwin did refer to pigeons in his transmutation notebooks, his reading lists, and the essay of 1844. But there is nothing
to indicate that by 1859 the subject would occupy one hundred folio pages in
manuscript.8 By gathering skins, skeletons, and "facts," Darwin hoped initially
to write the relevant parts of his big species book without becoming involved as a
breeder himself-"no amusement," he admitted, "but a horrid bore to me."9
This situation soon changed. By the end of March 1855, little more than a week
after the subject first appears in his letters, Darwin had decided to commit
himself to a greatly extended study of the domestic pigeon. "Yarrell has persuaded me to attempt it," he wrote, "and I am now fitting up a place, and have
written to Baily about prices, &c. &c." By 23 May Darwin had assumed his usual
enthusiasm for the subject of a new study. He set up an elaborate pigeon house in
the back of the garden at Down, bought birds from John Baily of Fleet Street, one
of the premier judges and poultry dealers in England, and began his breeding
5For Lyell's influence on Darwin, see, e.g., Michael T. Ghiselin, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1969), pp. 14-32; for Darwin's own views of his
debt with regard to artificial selection see Nora Barlow, ed., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
(New York: Norton, 1958), pp. 119-120. Although it deals with domesticated animals at some
length, Lyell's Principles contains almost nothing about pigeons. Historical discussions of Darwin and
domestication deal with its role in the discovery of natural selection; see esp. David Kohn, "Theories
to Work By: Rejected Theories, Reproduction, and Darwin's Path to Natural Selection," Studies in
History of Biology, 1980, 4:67-170.
6C. Darwin to W. D. Fox, 19 Mar. [1855], Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 46.
7For Darwin family correspondence relating to pigeons, see Elizabeth Meteyard, A Group of
Englishmen (1795 to 1815) Being Records of the Younger Wedgwoods and their Friends ... (London: Longmans, Green, 1871), pp. 357-359.
8Typical references to pigeons occur on pp. 127, 136, and 146-147 of the 4th notebook (Darwin's
pagination). See Gavin de Beer, ed., "Darwin's Notebooks on Transmutation of Species, Parts
I-IV"; G. de Beer et al., eds., "Part VI (Excised Pages)," Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural
History) Historical Series, 1960/61, 2(2-6), and 1967, 3(5). For Darwin's reading on poultry and
pigeons, see Peter Vorzimmer, "The Darwin Reading Notebooks (1838-1860)," J. Hist. Biol., 1977,
10: 107-153. For the essay of 1844, see C. Darwin, Foundations, pp. 66, 82, 113-114, 116-117, 129,
135, etc. Darwin offers to send the section on pigeons, which is "in a pretty good state," in C. Darwin
to T. H. Huxley, 13 Dec. [1859], Francis Darwin, ed., More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of
his Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters, Vol. I (London: John Murray, 1903), p. 130.
9C. Darwin to W. D. Fox, 19 Mar. [1855], Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 46.
166
JAMES A. SECORD
experiments and observations without delay. Reversing his earlier judgment,
Darwin told Fox that "they are a decided amusement to me, and delight to
H[enrietta]," his eldest daughter. By November he was deeply immersed in the
subject and was observing daily seven or eight pairs. "I will show you my
Pigeons!" he promised Lyell, "which are the greatest treat, in my opinion, which
can be offered to [a] human being."10OAt the peak of his researches in June of
1857 Darwin was keeping almost ninety birds, including some extremely rare and
choice specimens. II
The role of William Yarrell in convincing Darwin to alter his plans and enter
this new field of endeavor is worth noting, as his importance for Darwin's work
has been largely ignored in the previous historical literature. A stationer by trade,
Yarrell belonged to an earlier generation of British naturalists. He was a close
friend and advisor to Darwin for over a quarter of a century, beginning with the
preparations for the Beagle voyage in 1831 and ending only with Yarrell's death
in 1856. One of the most frequently mentioned names in Darwin's species notebooks, Yarrell was a well-known founder of the Zoological Society and the
author of several large works in natural history.12 Although Yarrell devoted only
a few sentences of his History of British Birds to the domestic pigeon, he does
describe several characteristics of the bird that would have led him to recommend
it for special scientific study. First, Yarrell had no doubt that the fancy pigeons
were derived from a single ancestral species, Columba livia, the common rock
pigeon; he therefore declined to describe the domestic varieties in any detail.
However (and this is a point that he must have stressed to Darwin) Yarrell did
focus on the remarkable variations produced through domestication, changes that
ranged from the color and number of feathers to the shape and size of the bones.
These changes, he noted, were the end products of a long history of man's intervention in the breeding of pigeons, a diversity "among the most curious of
zoological results." Or, as Darwin had written long before in his species notebooks, "analogy will certainly allow variation as much as the difference between
"13 Among all the domesticated animals, the
species,-for instance pidgeons....
pigeons were the most divergent and yet the most clearly related to a single
ancestor: for Darwin a perfect case study in the power of selection.
FANCIERS AND NATURALISTS: TWO VIEWS OF THE PIGEON
Like an optical trick that can be seen first in one way and then in another, the fancy
pigeon was poised on a classificatory edge, appearing to one vision as the single
progenitor and to the other as dozens of varieties, each made up of unique
individuals. On one side, Columba livia; on the other, the myriad fantails,
'?C. Darwin to W. D. Fox, 27 Mar. [1855], 23 May 1855, ibid., pp. 48-49, 50-51; C. Darwin to
C. Lyell, 4 Nov. [1855], Darwin-Lyell correspondence, American Philosophical Society Library,
Philadelphia (letter 115 in P. Thomas Carroll, ed., An Annotated Calendar of the Letters of Charles
Darwin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society [Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources,
1976]).
" C. Darwin to William B. Tegetmeier, 24 June [1857], Darwin-Tegetmeier correspondence, New
York Botanical Garden (photocopies courtesy William Montgomery, Library of APS.)
12For a biography and a bibliography of Yarrell see the posthumous 3rd ed. of his History of British
Fishes, Vol. 1 (London: John van Voorst, 1859), pp. v-xxiii. For his help on the Beagle preparations,
see Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 208.
13W. Yarrell, A History of British Birds, Vol. II (London: John van Voorst, 1856), pp. 298-308;
De Beer, "Darwin's Notebooks, Pt. IV," p. 136 of the 4th notebook.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
167
pouters, runts, toys, carriers, and tumblers (see frontispiece). "Fanciers almost
unanimously believe that the different races are descended from several wild
stocks," Darwin wrote, "whereas most naturalists believe that all are descended
from the Columba livia or rock-pigeon." The idea that the domestic pigeons
shared a single ancestor had been developed in France during the eighteenth
century, particularly by Buffon in his Histoire des oiseaux. By the mid-nineteenth
century it was the received opinion among ornithologists, leading them (as it had
Yarrell) to ignore almost entirely the domestic varieties. A standard authority,
C. J. Temminck, wrote of the fancy pigeons with an antipathy similar to that
expressed by Darwin before he had begun his breeding experiments: ". . . ce
n'est aussi qu' avec quelque degouit que nous nous en occupons: on ne peut guere
s'occuper de ces races degradees que d'apres des simples suppositions, que l'on
hasarde pour la plupart. . . . 9914 No wonder then that Temminck, like Yarrell and
most other naturalists, hurried over the degenerate varieties produced by man in
order to describe the pure strains of nature's production. Most of the space in
such works was occupied by descriptions of exotic birds from around the world,
colorful species known through specimens brought home from voyages like that
of the Beagle. The huge ornithological folios of Madame Knip had dozens of
plates devoted to the rare tropical species, but only one illustration of the rock
pigeon, and none of the varieties so prized by the fanciers.1I
Such a lack of respect for the objects of their fancy did not go unnoticed among
the English pigeon breeders. Several books on the subject that Darwin read
included strongly worded attacks on the natural history community. In annotating
John Moore's Columbarium of 1735, John M. Eaton remarked in 1852 upon his
author's strictures against ornithologists:
He bitterly complainsof the Naturalistsand Ornithologists,of their indolencein not
giving us an accountof FancyPigeons, and those that did give us but veryshortcursory
descriptions, and in this have been guilty of great mistakes. Mr. Moore might have
saved himselfa good deal of uneasinessif he had only askedhimselfthe question,How
can a learned man write on a subject he did not understand?6
In 1851 the Reverend Edmund S. Dixon, a keeper of pigeons since childhood,
issued a similar censure in another book owned by Darwin. "Scientific naturalists," he wrote, "all seem to avoid the task of investigating the history of domesticated creatures; and when they are compelled to touch upon the subject, are apt
to generalize hastily, and glide through the different forms that are presented to
them with unsatisfactory rapidity."17 Dixon claimed that the theory of a single
"4Darwin, Variation, Vol. I, p. 180; Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Oeuvres, Vol. XIX (Paris,
1821), p. 373; C. J. Temminck, Histoire naturelle gMnirale des pigeons et des gallinaces, Vol. I
(Amsterdam/Paris: 1813), pp. 202-203. Temminck was director of the Academy of Sciences and
Arts of Harlem and of the Royal Museums of Holland; see Erwin Stresemann, Ornithology from
Aristotle to the Present (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 110-125.
'sMadam Knip and C. J. Themminck [sic], Les Pigeons (Paris, n.d.), 2nd ed. Temminck does,
however, include some brief quotations from Buffon on the care of pigeons in captivity; see Plate
XII, pp. 27-30.
16John Matthews Eaton, A Treatise on the Art of Breeding and Managing Tame, Domesticated, and
Fancy Pigeons, Carefully Compiled from the Best Authors, with Observations, Containing All that is
Necessary to be Known of Tame, Domesticated, and Fancy Pigeons (London, 1852), p. xiii, henceforth Eaton, Treatise (1852).
17Edmund Saul Dixon, The Dovecot and the Aviary: Being Sketches of the Natural History of
Pigeons and Other Domestic Birds in a Captive State, with Hints for their Management (London: John
Murray, 1851), pp. 78-79.
168
JAMES A. SECORD
origin for the fancy pigeons was based largely on the dismissal of the study of
domesticated birds as an intellectually and socially inferior pursuit.
But for Dixon the careless approach of the naturalists embodied a far greater
threat than the mere neglect of fancy pigeons. Tracing lines of descent led not
only to the rock pigeon, but also to the atheistical theories of the recently published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. "My code of natural historical
faith," the Reverend wrote, "is this: that the domestic races of birds and animals
are not developments, but creations. I believe that the Almighty gave to the
human race tame creatures to serve and feed it. . . .
Darwin, who marked this
passage in his copy of Dixon's book, was certainly not the only one to see that the
remarkable variation in the domesticated descendants of one wild bird could be
used as evidence for an evolutionary theory. Dixon's creed determined the
tripartite nature of his classification of the pigeons. One group was found only in
a domesticated state, another only in the wild, and an intermediate group could
exist either wild or tamed. 19
According to Darwin, Dixon's view that each race of pigeon was a distinct
species was commonly held among the fanciers. However, the evidence suggests
that this characterization was somewhat misleading. When pressed by Darwin or
another naturalist, most fanciers probably guessed at a multiple origin. But this
was a fancier's commonsense answer to a question from the world of natural
history: for the keeper of pigeons, the birds were the object of a fancy, not the
subjects of a scientific classification. A later author was probably referring to this
aspect of Dixon's work when he commented that Dixon "wrote much more from
a naturalist's point of view than any other."20 Those fanciers who did discuss the
classification of the pigeons performed their task with an eye to the needs of their
hobby rather than with any attention to the principles of scientific taxonomy. For
example, Bernard P. Brent (a leading fancier and one of Darwin's chief informants) designed a classification chiefly intended to provide for fairer judging at
poultry shows. He divided the pigeons into four principal groupings:
* native doves,
* native wild pigeons,
* fancy pigeons, especially carriers, tumblers, pouters, and runts,
* inferior fancy pigeons, or toys.
Although Brent speculated in passing that the toys might have been derived from
a single species of wild pigeon, most of his article was simply concerned with
downgrading these "inferior" fancy pigeons with respect to the more established,
standard breeds. Brent wished to insure that a clear separation was made between
these two groups, particularly in the awarding of prizes. For him, such questions
outweighed problems of affinity or descent.21
"5Dixon, Dovecot, pp. 72-73. See also [E. S. Dixon], "Poultry Literature," Quarterly Review,
1851, 88:317-351, at pp. 332-333. Dixon's comments are directed against Robert Chambers,
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (lst ed. 1844; New York: Humanities Press, 1969).
Darwin's annotated books are at the University Library, Cambridge.
'9Dixon, Dovecot, p. 85.
2'Robert Fulton, The Illustrated Book of Pigeons (New York/London, ?1875), p. 12.
21Bernard P. Brent, "Classification of Pigeons," The Cottage Gardener, and Country Gentleman's
Companion, 1856, 15:417-418. Darwin argues against this type of division in Variation, Vol. I,
pp. 187-188. For an obituary of Brent, see "The Late Mr. B. P. Brent," The Field, the Farm, the
Garden, the Country Gentleman's Newspaper, 1867, 29:70. Brent spent much time on the continent,
and his numerous articles are a good source of information on pigeon breeding in France and
Germany.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
-
169
Figure 1. The Almond Tumbler,
"A Portrait from Life in
the Possession of the
Author." Frontispiece to
John M. Eaton, A Treatise
on the Art of Breeding
and Managing the Almond
Tumbler (London, 1851).
->:->
-
The concerns and prioritiesof the fancierare best illustratedin the writingsof
John M. Eaton, a series of books that Darwinowned and found especiallyuseful.
Eaton's works, A Treatise on the Art of Breeding and Managing the Almond
Tumbler (1851) and A Treatise on the Art of Breeding and Managing ... Fancy
Pigeons . . . (1852, 1858) were dedicatedto those who, like Darwin, were new to
the fancy.22Attempting in a highly eccentricfashion to convey the pleasuresand
the techniques of pigeon keeping, Eaton provided Darwin with an explicit discussion of the practice of the fancy, a descriptionof the selecting hand in action.
As a contemporaryreviewer remarked,"it is the best and fullest work which has
yet appeared upon the subject . .. the accumulatedexperience of practicalmen
arranged by one enthusiastically fond of the birds.
. .
." Eaton was well aware
that most naturalistslinked all the fancy pigeons to a single ancestralspecies. But
he did not deal further with the question; his concerns, like those of most
fanciers, lay elsewhere.23
Eaton's great passion was the Almond Tumbler, a color variantof the shortfaced breed of tumbler,which in turnwas a varietyof the rockpigeon (Fig. 1). He
described in meticulous detail the "five properties"of the Almond Tumbler, the
principalpoints to be observed when breedingthe birds:shape or carriage,head,
beak, eye, and feather. The first of these properties,muchcoveted by the English
fanciers, necessitated skeletal changes and was quite difficult to produce. As
Darwin said, "we cannot change the structureof a bird as quicklyas we can the
fashion of our dress."24The fancier did not seek out large changes or sudden
variations in size or shape; the property was far more subtle, emphasizingthe
form of the whole bird. "To my fancy," wrote Eaton, "I am not awarethat there
is anything . .. so truly beautiful and elegant in its proportionor symmetryof
style, as the shape or carriageof the Almond Tumblerapproachingperfection, in
22Eaton, A Treatise on the Art of Breeding and Managing the Almond Tumbler (London, 1851),
henceforth Eaton, Almond Tumbler (1851); Eaton, Treatise (1852); and Eaton, A Treatise on the Art
of Breeding and Managing Tame, Domesticated, Foreign, and Fancy Pigeons....
(London, 1858),
henceforth Eaton, Treatise(1858). Both editions of the Treatiseusually include the book on the
Almond Tumbler;they are both annotatedreprintsof John Moore's Columbarium(London, 1735),
but the 1852 and 1858 editions differ considerably.
23B. P. Brent, Cottage Gardener, 1853, 11:36; Eaton, Treatise (1858), p. 120.
24Variation,Vol. I, p. 215. Darwin remarkson the highly specialized nature of the fancy in
C. Darwin to T. H. Huxley, [n.d.] Life and Letters,Vol. II, p. 51.
170
JAMES A. SECORD
this property, (save lovely woman) ....'. The length and shape of the beak were
other important points for judging. In order to select properly for them, Eaton
recommended that the reader use the head of a dead goldfinch for comparison.25
In England "feather," or the color and quality of the plumage, was generally less
valued than the other properties; for example, it was the chief determinant of
Brent's inferior fancy pigeons.
The task of the serious breeder of pigeons was thus not one of classification, for
any fancier of experience knew how to tell a runt from a fantail, or a pouter from
a tumbler. The true connoisseur hoped to realize an ideal type through the
upkeep of a set of rigorous standards. As Eaton emphasized at the conclusion to
his book on the Almond Tumbler, attention was required at a highly exacting
level:
It is possible, from readingthis Treatise, that if two birdswere in the pen, the one a
carrier, the other an Almond Tumbler, you might be able to discover the Almond
Tumbler, from the great differenceof the birds, but when you come to know that the
one-sixteenth part of an inch excites the admirationof good Fanciers,it is infinitely
more appreciated,and greatlyenhances the value of the bird.26
SOCIETIES, SHOWS, AND PIGEONS: THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE FANCY
The divergence of interests is apparent. Most ornithologists limited their discussion of fancy pigeons to a brief note of their place in a scheme of classification;
the birds were of interest only in that they showed that the rock pigeon could be
domesticated. For breeders such questions were either subordinated to the needs
of the fancy or-most commonly-simply ignored. The divergence was expressed
institutionally as well. The importance to Victorian science of such well-known
organizations as the Zoological and Linnean Societies has long been recognized.
With their published transactions, meetings, and opportunities for social contacts, they provided an outlet for the natural-historical and ornithological views
of the pigeon.27
But as Eaton emphasized in his books, pigeon fancying was also an organized
social activity. There are many reasons for the widespread popularity of pigeon
fancying in nineteenth-century England. Inexpensive and easy to breed, pigeons
reproduced rapidly; small in size, requiring little space, they demanded little
attention. For Darwin these were important practical reasons for studying the
pigeon, making it possible to keep many varieties and to try many crosses. For a
population increasingly crowded into cities, considerations of space and expense
were matters of necessity. "Some of the busiest and best of men," the fancier
Robert Fulton wrote, "are becoming pigeon-fanciers, under the ever-increasing
pressure of the battle of life in which they are engaged."28 Even the poorest
Londoner could afford to keep a few tumblers on his housetop. Pigeon keeping
provided the harried urban dweller with a link, however tenuous, to a rural
Arcadian past. Furthermore, as some of the previous quotations suggest, it seems
2"Eaton, Almond Tumbler (1851), pp. 8, 9.
26Ibid., p. 48.
27David E. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History (London: Allen Lane, 1976) provides
an excellent introduction to the Victorian natural history community. Many of the trends within
popular natural history that he traces resulted from the same underlying causes that led to the rise of
Victorian pigeon fancying.
2"Fulton, Illustrated Book of Pigeons, p. 2.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
171
possible that pigeon fancying appealed to a society that pushed the human body
into tight-laced extremes of fashion. As one Victorian critic wrote:
Reducing the white on the crownof the head to a minimum,and drivingthe coloured
feathers as high on the top of the head as you can get them, is undoubtedly the
prevailing fashion. But in an age when fashion encourages such eccentricities as tight
lacing, tight boots, chimney-pot hats, and high cut Baldheads [a variety of pigeon] you
are prepared for any aberration, however grotesque, it may be guilty of.29
Like aquaria and indoor plants, pigeon fancying fascinated the Victorians by
keeping nature close at hand yet under control. Finally, pigeons could serve as a
pretext for social gatherings and congenial conversation. Like any coherent and
well-organized body of knowledge in nineteenth-century England, the widespread interest in the birds was shared through a number of organizations and
publications. These social locations of knowledge concerning domestic pigeons
were the sources that Darwin contacted in the years before 1859, for the subject
of domestication required a depth of understanding that he could not satisfy
through books alone.
First there were the shows. The annual poultry show at Birmingham was the
largest of these, "the Olympic Game of the Poultry World."30 The passion for
poultry improvement that seems to have swept England during the nineteenth
century (the "fowl mania" as one author termed it) reached its apotheosis in the
huge affair at Birmingham. In addition, most counties had smaller annual shows,
frequently leading events on the fancier's calendar. Many of the best fanciers
came to display their treasures at special sections of these shows devoted to
pigeons. In 1855 and 1856 the largest poultry exhibition in the London area was
held in the open air at the Anerley Gardens near the Crystal Palace, which had
been recently moved to Sydenham. The prizes were very generous and enticed
many of the fanciers into bringing their favorite birds. However, the second
exhibition at Anerley failed to pay expenses, and it folded in a tangle of lawsuits
and unpaid bills. From January 1857 the gap left by its demise was filled by an
even larger show within the Crystal Palace itself. Held twice a year, once in
summer and once in winter, the Crystal Palace poultry show usually had over a
thousand pens, including several hundred devoted to pigeons. Many Londoners
brought their families to these huge poultry exhibitions, coming as much for the
music, the gardens, and the country air as for a view of the prize birds on
display.31
Announcements of exhibitions and of the prizes awarded at them were provided by a variety of periodical publications. The weekly Field . .. or Country
Gentleman's Newspaper frequently ran a poultry column, which often discussed
matters of interest to the pigeon fancier. The Cottage Gardener, founded in 1849,
featured a regular "Poultry Chronicle," a central source of information for the
fancy in London. During 1854 and 1855 this section of the journal seceded to
29J. Lucas, The Pleasures of a Pigeon Fancier (2nd ed., London, 1899), introduction.
30Cottage Gardener, 1855, 15:207.
31For "fowl mania, " see Cottage Gardener, 1855, 13:466. "Almost every district has now its poultry
show, if not its poultry shows .... All of this denotes a great increase of poultry fancy, but how are
we off for eggs in the mean time?" "Fruits of the Poultry Fancy," Field, 1853, 2:465. For the Anerley
show, see Cottage Gardener, 1855, 14:417-419; 1856, 16:356-357; 1856, 17:70, 194. For the Crystal
Palace exhibitions, see, e.g., Cottage Gardener, 1856/7, 17:137, 268-282; 1857, 18:223-224, 321;
1858, 19:237-239, 252-255; 1858, 20:317-318; 1859, 21:253-255; 1860, 24:349, 365-366.
172
JAMES A. SECORD
form the independently published Poultry Chronicle. Only three volumes appeared, however, before the venture failed. In 1861 the Cottage Gardener itself
was subsumed by the Journal of Horticulture. These journals and columns kept
breeders of birds in contact with one another; correspondents could air grievances, make enquiries, or suggest technical improvements. Much space was
devoted to announcing shows and reporting their results. Some individuals, such
as B. P. Brent and W. B. Tegetmeier (both specially singled out by Darwin for
their aid in his species work), published long runs of essays in these journals,
articles which could eventually be gathered together for separate publication as a
book.
In many ways the pigeon clubs provide the clearest institutional expression of
the aims of the fancy. Since they formed Darwin's major link with the world of
the pigeon breeders, their purposes and history need to be examined in some
detail. The earliest societies of pigeon fanciers arose in the coffee houses and
taverns in eighteenth-century England.32 The most famous of these early organizations was the original Columbarian Society, founded in 1750. Its ranks were
graced by the well-known breeder Sir John Sebright and other men of social
distinction and at one time included seven members of Parliament. Like Eaton
this society specialized in the Almond Tumbler, setting forth a formal series of
measurements and standards to be used in judging the birds.33
All the later societies traced their lineage back to this group, which had gone
out of existence in 1850. By then there were four other pigeon clubs in the
metropolis. To a large extent the membership of these societies was divided along
class lines. "The clubs," Tegetmeier wrote, "vary no less than the members,
some aspiring to the great room at Freemasons Hall, others being satisfied with
the accommodation afforded by the humblest beer-shop in Spitalfields." The club
that met in the Freemason's Tavern was the Philoperisteron Society (the "Philo"),
formed for the gentlemen fanciers of the West End of London.34 Surrounded with
an aura of social exclusiveness, the society printed an elaborate list of rules modeled on those of the Athenaeum and other prestigious organizations. Strangers
were allowed to attend regular meetings only when accompanied by a member,
and election was by ballot, with two dissenting votes resulting in disqualification.
Dealers were not admitted. The "Philos," as they were called, held two day-long
exhibitions each year. A show of young pigeons was held in July, one for mature
birds in January. Judging from the enthusiastic reports in the Poultry Chronicle
and the Cottage Gardener, the winter show was the best in England, and attendance numbered in the hundreds (see Fig. 2). Unlike virtually all other poultry
and pigeon shows, these shows did not offer prizes, but this does not seem to have
dissuaded the members from bringing forth their best birds. The shows owed
their origin to a vigorous debate over the exact shade of the Almond Tumbler at
32The single most complete source is "Metropolitan Pigeon Societies and their History," in Fulton,
Illustrated Book of Pigeons, pp. 384-386. William F. Lumley's revision of the work (Fulton's Book of
Pigeons, 1895) instead describes the history of the societies as they became increasingly specialized
(pp. 518-527). Other information can be pieced together from contemporary poultry journalism.
33See Eaton, Treatise (1858), pp. 185-187, where these standards are republished. Darwin refers
to them in Variation, Vol. I, p. 170.
34W. B. Tegetmeier, "The London Pigeon Clubs," Cottage Gardener, 1858, 20: 319-320. The
constitution of the Philos is reprinted in Poultry Chronicle, 1854, 1:286-287.
35See, e.g., Poultry Chronicle, 1855, 2:515-516, 595-596; 1855, 3:467-468; Cottage Gardener,
1856, 15:301; 1857, 17:262; 1858, 19:256; 1859, 21:256; and Illustrated London News, 1853, 22:38.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
5
173
11
ol~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i
LondonNews, 1853,22:37.
Figure 2. "AnnualPigeon Show of the Phib-PeristeronSociety,"Illustrated
one of the society's early meetings. This question, the fanciers felt, could be
resolved only through a public show in daylight.36
The social selectivity of Sebright'sColumbarianand the Philoperisteronwas
almost certainly an attempt to escape the reputation of pigeon fancying as an
occupation for the lower classes-and thus the social equivalentof the naturalists'
distaste for dealing with domestic pigeons. "Time was, and not many years
since," wrote B. P. Brent, "when 'a Pigeon Fancier'was associated in all men's
minds with Costermongers,Pugilists, Rat-catchers,and Dog-stealers, and for no
other reason that we can discern than that the majorityof Pigeon Fancierswere
artisans...." The elements of social exclusiveness claimed by the Philoperisteron did not go unnoticed by the other London pigeon clubs. One critic in the
Poultry Chronicleclaimed that better pigeons could be found among the Spitalfields weavers than at the Philos' highly touted annual shows. Eaton was especially vehement in his denunciation. "I have seen Rules of a Society," he wrote,
". . . that appeared to me as though brought out to bird-lime the House of Lords
I am aware that there are some men, who wish to be thought
or Commons....
Fanciers, who would not like to sit in a room with Fanciersunless they sported a
little bit of black satin or a velvet waistcoat. . ..37
By 1855 there were a number of alternatives to the Philoperisteron.In his
criticisms of that select body Eaton pointed in contrastto the SouthwarkColumbarian Society, of which he was president. Eaton's club, founded in 1833, cost
only ten shillings to join, less than half the guinea fee required at the Philoperisteron. Although it had no writtenconstitution,interestedpartiesstill had to
36Fulton,IllustratedBook of Pigeons, p. 385.
3"B. P. Brent, Cottage Gardener, 1853, 11:35; Poultry Chronicle, 1854, 1:288; Eaton, Treatise
(1858), p. 185.
174
JAMES A. SECORD
be introduced by a member.38 The meetings of the Southwark club alternated
every other week with those of a third group, the City Columbarian, which was
even more egalitarian; no introduction from a member and no entrance fees were
required.39 The City Columbarian, or "Feather Club," had been formed in 1825
as a less specialized alternative to the original Columbarian. The fourth of the
pigeon clubs, the National Columbarian Society, originated in a splitting of the
Philoperisteron, largely because of the latter's expense, exclusiveness, and infrequency of meetings. However, a number of the most prominent fanciers, including many of those known by Darwin, held memberships in both the Philo and
the National.40
Whatever the social ranking of their membership, all these societies served to
maintain the standards and the historical continuity of the fancy. Standardizing
criteria to the one-sixteenth inch praised by Eaton, they defined a uniform
selection pressure extending throughout the entire population of domesticated
pigeons. As forums for dispute, sources of expertise, centers for discussion, and
rewarders of merit, the pigeon clubs permitted a group of like-minded individuals
to submerge themselves in the peculiar vision of the fancy. In order to understand
the process of artificial selection as applied to the fancy pigeons, Darwin necessarily turned to the societies and their members, the shows and publications of the
Victorian fancying world.
A NATURALIST AMONG THE FANCIERS
As Sandra Herbert and others have shown, the standards and roles defined by the
Geological, Linnean, and other Victorian scientific bodies influenced substantially Darwin's presentation of his theory of evolution.41 No one would claim that
Darwin's memberships in two of the London pigeon clubs were of similar importance in the development of his theory. But his involvement with them and with
other aspects of the fancying community sheds considerable light on his methods
of research. Breaking out of the intellectual and social confines of natural history,
Darwin found in the community of breeders an irreplaceable source of an alternative vision, one that he could apply to nature herself.
Fully as important to Darwin as his attendance at shows and club meetings were
his contacts with the individual fanciers-Eaton, Brent, F. C. Esquilant, Harrison
Weir, and so on-mentioned in the notes of acknowledgement to Variation under
Domestication. Unfortunately, beyond the prizes they won, the offices they held,
and the birds they showed, we know almost nothing about these men. The one
exception is William B. Tegetmeier who, although by no means a typical fancier,
was Darwin's greatest source on all types of poultry, including the pigeons.
Tegetmeier had planned to enter a medical career (his father had been a navy
surgeon), but after failing his examinations he was forced to turn instead to
journalism. Since childhood he had entertained a special interest in both homing
38Eaton, Treatise (1858), p. iv; Poultry Chronicle, 1854, 1:287-288; for a description of a meeting,
see Poultry Chronicle, 1855, 2:535.
39Poultry Chronicle, 1854, 1:287-288.
40A controversy between the National and the Philoperisteron was carried on in the pages of the
Cottage Gardener, 1857, 18:125, 193, 210. For the rules of the National Columbarian, see Cottage
Gardener, 1857, 18:142. In 1868 the two groups became united to form the National Peristeronic
Society (Fulton, Illustrated Book of Pigeons, p. 385).
41 Sandra Herbert, "The Place of Man in the Development of Darwin's Theory of Transmutation,
Part II," J. Hist. Biol., 1977, 10:243-273, on pp. 167-176.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
175
and fancy pigeons. "How wonderfully successful you have been in breeding
Pouters!" Darwin wrote in 1861. "You have a good right to be proud of your
accuracy of eye and judgment." As poultry editor for the Field, a frequent contributor to the breeding periodicals, a judge at the great poultry shows, and the
author of several books, Tegetmeier was able to turn his expertise to financial
account. But Tegetmeier was much more than just another "gentleman of the
fancy." The house that his father rented when they first moved to London was
owned by none other than William Yarrell, who proceeded to introduce the
young boy to natural history just as he later introduced him to Darwin. A fellow
of the Zoological Society and the British Ornithologists' Union, Tegetmeier
published several scientific papers. One of these, on the formation of the cells of
the honey bee, served as a keystone of Darwin's discussion of that subject in the
Origin.42
However, natural history did not pay, and for Tegetmeier science remained
secondary to his career in journalism. "Pray keep firm to your idea of working
out the subject of analogous variations with pigeons," the independently wealthy
Darwin urged. "I really think you might thus make a novel and valuable contribution to science. I can, however, quite understand how much your time must be
occupied with the never-ending, always-beginning editorial cares."4 In his correspondence with Tegetmeier, Darwin seems to have made scrupulously careful
financial arrangements, ensuring that at a minimum all expenses were paid. He
viewed Tegetmeier (at least to some extent) as an advanced paid assistant rather
than a colleague. Darwin would never have offered a cash payment to Lyell or
Henslow for checking an unpublished manuscript as he did to Tegetmeier, comparing his role to that of a "barrister." As Darwin told Fox, "we cannot be said to
944 Yet Tegetmeier undoubtedly performed many
be working at all together....
useful services for Darwin: conducting experiments, answering queries, serving
as an intermediary to the fancy, and interpreting evolutionary theories to the
poultry breeders. At Darwin's request Tegetmeier asked readers of the Cottage
Gardener to report any examples of the finnikin or Turner pigeon, generally
thought to be extinct; the Variation under Domestication eventually noted that
none had been found.45 Tegetmeier also helped introduce Darwin to individual
fanciers of importance, as in 1856 when they made plans to visit Mr. Bult and his
famous collection of pouter pigeons (see frontispiece).46 Combining in one person a knowledge of natural history and the trained eye of an expert on pigeons,
Tegetmeier was an ideal correspondent for Darwin, an inside window on the
world of the fancy. His letters, which extend from 1855 to 1881, were one of
Darwin's main sources of information on pigeons and a fruitful outlet for Tegetmeier's own scientific efforts, however those efforts might be limited by financial
necessity.
42C. Darwin to W. B. Tegetmeier, 22 Mar. 1861, More Letters, Vol. I, pp. 180-181. W. B.
Tegetmeier, "On the Cells of the Honey-Bee," Entomological Society Transactions, 1859, 5:34-35;
Origin, p. 228. For Tegetmeier's life see his obituary, Times (London), 20 Nov. 1912, p. 11, col. 4,
and Who was Who.
43C.Darwin to W. B. Tegetmeier, 15 July 1870, More Letters, Vol. I, p. 322.
"4C. Darwin to W. B. Tegetmeier, 27 [Dec. 1862], 22 Mar. [1861], ibid., pp. 223-224, 180-181;
C. Darwin to W. D. Fox, 15 Mar. [1856], Darwin correspondence, Christ's College, Cambridge.
"5See Cottage Gardener, 1856, 17:103; Variation, Vol. I, p. 156. Also C. Darwin to W. B.
Tegetmeier, 21 Sept. 1856, New York Botanical Garden.
46C. Darwin to W. B. Tegetmeier, 14 Jan. [1856], and "Friday Morning" [1856], New York
Botanical Garden.
JAMES A. SECORD
176
Darwin met a wide variety of correspondents and informants, partly through
the aid of Tegetmeier. He attended several poultry and pigeon shows in the
vicinity of London, including the exhibitions at the Crystal Palace and at Anerley
Gardens, and on one occasion even allowed the sponsoring committee of a large
poultry show the use of his name.47 The fruits of his expeditions to these large and
noisy affairs are evident in the Origin and the Variation under Domestication. "I
really do not know how to advise about getting up facts on breeding and improving breeds," Darwin wrote to Huxley. "Go to Shows is one way. "48
Darwin met most of his acquaintances in the fancy through his membership in
two of the London pigeon clubs. Unlike Tegetmeier, most of the members of
these clubs lacked a knowledge of natural history; their world was that of the
fancy-the meetings, shows, and journals described in the previous section. As
we have seen, the societies of the fancy were divided along class lines; not surprisingly Darwin seems to have felt most comfortable in the relative social
exclusiveness of the Philoperisteron. The majority of those he thanks in notes
to his books were Philos: Bult, Esquilant, Haynes, P. H. Jones, Tegetmeier,
and Harrison Weir can all be identified as active members.49 Darwin found their
discussions and grand shows especially useful for his species work, particularly
the January show, famous for the numerous varieties exhibited from foreign
countries. One pen at the eighth show, for example, "was entirely filled with
curious and brilliant receipts from abroad."50
In the Cottage Gardener we find several glimpses of Darwin at the winter shows
of the Philoperisteron. After describing the various pigeons on display, the issue
for January 1856 notes what was probably Darwin's first attendance:
The companywas numerous,and includedsome of our first naturalists.Mr. Yarrell,
whose name is a "household word" with all Zoologists, and Mr. Darwin, whose
"Naturalist'sVoyage round the World," is known all over the world, were present,
and, with our old correspondent,Mr. Tegetmeier, were examiningbird after bird,
with a view to ascertainsome of those differenceson which the distinctionbetween
species or varieties depend.
Darwin's overall purpose in attending the exhibit was no secret. The importance
of Yarrell as Darwin's associate in the years before the publication of the Origin is
illustrated here again. Not only did he spur Darwin's interest in the domestic
pigeons; he had also been attending the Philoperisteron shows long before Darwin had shown the slightest interest in the subject. "The late Mr. Yarrell was a
constant visitor of the Exhibitions of the Philoperisteron Society," wrote the
Cottage Gardener in 1856, the year of his death. This article by Tegetmeier also
described what was almost certainly the election of Darwin to the Philoperisteron
Society on 14 October of that year.51 How many meetings Darwin attended is not
Darwin to W. B. Tegetmeier, 11 May [1857], [30 June 1857], New York Botanical Garden.
48C. Darwin to T. H. Huxley, 27 Nov. [1859], Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 282.
49See the frequent reports of Philo meetings in Cottage Gardener and Poultry Chronicle; some
members of the various clubs are listed in Fulton, Illustrated Book of Pigeons, pp. 384-386.
50Poultry Chronicle, 1855, 2:515-516; see Variation, Vol. I, p. 157 for Darwin's use of a foreign
bird exhibited at a meeting in 1863 (one of the few additions to the pigeon chapters between 1860 and
1868, when Variation was published).
' Cottage Gardener, 22 Jan. 1856, 15:101; W. B. Tegetmeier, "Philoperisteron Society," Cottage
Gardener, 11 Nov. 1856, 17:103. The description of the show for 1858 illustrates the status that
natural history study was felt to confer on pigeon fancying: "It relieves Pigeon fancying from all
47C.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
177
known, but clearly his membership was more than merely an honorary token
of esteem.
The identity of the other society of the fancy that Darwin joined in the mid1850s is uncertain. Francis Darwin in editing his father's letters identified it as the
"Columbarian."52But the other three clubs (the Southwark, the National, and
the City) all called themselves the Columbarian. Perhaps Darwin was one of the
many who joined both the Philoperisteron and the National. However, Darwin
did describe at least one meeting of the Southwark Columbarian. "I have found it
very important associating with fanciers and breeders," he wrote Huxley:
For instance, I sat one eveningin a gin palacein the Boroughamongsta set of pigeon
fanciers, when it was hinted that Mr. Bult had crossedhis Pouterswith Runts [a very
large breed of pigeon] to gain size; and if you had seen the solemn, the mysterious,and
awful shakes of the head whichall the fanciersgave at this scandalousproceeding,you
would have recognized how little crossinghas had to do with improvingbreeds, and
how dangerousfor endless generationsthe processwas. All this was broughthome far
more vividly than by pages of mere statements,&c.53
Darwin was not the sort of man to frequent gin palaces, and he seems to have
viewed these meetings with a slightly patronizing air of mild bemusement. But
men like Eaton and Corker (successive presidents of the Southwark Columbarian), although well below him in education and social standing, were highly
useful to Darwin in his attempts to understand artificial selection. At the Southwark meeting, as we will see, he gained an important insight into the effects of
intercrossing, one that could not have been obtained in any other way.54
Darwin repeatedly emphasized the special character of the knowledge he had
assimilated through direct contact with the English fanciers. But in another sense,
the information that this source provided was just more grist for his Gradgrindian
mill of "facts." As he wrote to Tegetmeier in 1861, "I care for many points disregarded by fanciers." The difference is underlined when we look at Darwin's
own discussion of crossing, in the Variation under Domestication. Here he balanced opinions like those of the Southwark fanciers against other evidences
tending in the opposite direction. "Until quite lately," Darwin wrote, "cautious
and experienced breeders . . . were almost universally convinced that the attempt to establish a new race, intermediate between two widely distinct races,
was hopeless. . ." The problem, he continued, was one of patience; a halfdozen or more generations were required before the new variety would breed
true.55 Darwin even quoted a specific instance of such an alleged success
charge of triviality when savans of such reputation as Messrs. Darwin and Waterhouse show, by their
attendance and interest, that the changes capable of being produced in any species by domestication,
are worthy of the deep attention of scientific inquirers; and in no species are these changes greater, or
more varied, than in the Pigeon." Cottage Gardener, 19 Jan. 1858, 19:256.
S2Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 51.
53C. Darwin to T. H. Huxley, 27 Nov. [1859], ibid., pp. 280-282.
14For Eaton and Corker's presidencies, see Fulton, Illustrated Book of Pigeons, p. 385. Eaton
inherited a fairly substantial tailoring business, but eventually gave it up to become a full-time dealer
in pigeons. See W. B. Tegetmeier, "Death of Mr. Eaton," Field, 1868, 31:277. The Field is perhaps
the best biographical source for prominent agriculturalists, breeders, and fanciers. Darwin refers to
certain parts of Eaton's books as "these comical passages, written seriously," Variation, Vol. I,
p. 215.
"5C. Darwin to W. B. Tegetmeier, 22 Mar. [1861], More Letters, Vol. I, pp. 180-181; Variation,
Vol. II, pp. 96, 125-126.
178
JAMES A. SECORD
involving the pouter-runt cross brought before the Southwark Columbarian. Yet
the experience of the breeders remained valid: Darwin concluded that such
crosses, because of their difficulty, had probably been infrequent both in nature
and in captivity.
Thus Darwin remained an outsider, a naturalist among fanciers, even in the
more familiar social surroundings of the Philos. His position with regard to the
competing pigeon societies was perhaps analogous to that of Sir John Sebright,
whom Eaton praised for visiting the aviaries of aristocrats and artisans. "I have
now a grand collection of living & dead pigeons;" Darwin wrote an American
friend, "& I am hand & glove with all sorts of Fanciers, Spital-field weavers
& ... odd specimens of the Human species, who fancy Pigeons."56 In order to
make his knowledge of the pigeons as scientifically complete as possible, Darwin
needed to look in as many places as he could, from the gin palaces of Southwark
to the jungles of Malaysia.
In one sense, then, Darwin's contacts with the fancy in England were only one
part of a network of informants who sent him specimens and facts on breeding
from all over the world. Using the widely spread facilities of Britain's mid-century
empire of trade and influence, Darwin was able to query more than a score of
travelers, consular officials, medical men, and merchants about pigeons and
pigeon keeping in other parts of the globe. He obtained rock pigeons from
Laurence Edmondstone, a Shetland physician, and skins from Henry Layard,
who was doing archeological work in the Middle East.s7 Darwin became remarkably skilled at expressing a modest desire for extraordinary quantities of information, at making each correspondent feel as though his was the essential contribution to the work. While composing the long version of the Origin, Darwin did not
use a printed list of questions in his researches on domestication. He must have
judged from the lack of replies to the questionnaire of 1839 that the personal
letter was a far more effective tool for extracting information from distant
strangers.58 Information from the British fanciers and this global network of
letters fitted together unproblematically; from England and abroad alike he
added new skins and skeletons to his collection, new data on the laws of inheritance and the correlation of growth.
But by going to shows, joining the English clubs, regularly reading the poultry
journals, and breeding pigeons himself, Darwin obtained something more than
mere factual information. His contacts with the English fanciers provided him
with his most direct exposure to the selecting process in action. The fancier's view
of the pigeon, Darwin thought, was not so much like a naturalist's as like that of
nature herself.
5"Charles Darwin to James Dwight Dana, 29 Sept. [1856?], Dana Scientific Papers, Folder 9,
Carton No. 1, Yale University Library.
57How Darwin constructed his international network of correspondents needs more investigation, which completion of the Darwin letters project will greatly facilitate. For his correspondence on pigeons, see Variation, Vol. I, pp. 14, 131-132; Darwin to W. D. Fox, 3 Jan. [1856],
Christ's College, Cambridge (where Darwin refers to sending more than a score of letters abroad).
Gavin de Beer, "Some Unpublished Letters of Charles Darwin," Notes and Records of the Royal
Society, 1859, 14:12-60, at pp. 28-32 prints the letters to Edmondstone. For Layard, see Darwin to
Layard, 8 June [ca. 1856-1860], American Philosophical Society Library, letter 143 (Carroll,
Calendar).
58Darwin's questionnaire is printed in Peter Vorzimmer, "Darwin's Questions about the Breeding
of Animals," J. Hist. Biol., 1969, 2:269-281.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
179
DARWIN ON PIGEONS (I):
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF DIVERSITY AND A SINGLE ORIGIN
As we have seen, in traversing the intellectual boundary between nature and
artifice, Darwin had to cross institutional and social boundaries as well. But what
did he learn from his forays into the world of the breeders? What did he make of
his exposure to both the ornithological and the fancying communities, and their
differing points of view? In reading the Origin or the Variation under Domestication, what appears most remarkable is Darwin's overall approach to the subject of
artificial selection, for he focused on precisely the relationship that had been
previously neglected by both groups. Virtually all naturalists had taken for
granted the origin of the domestic varieties from the rock pigeon, while for most
fanciers such a question was largely beside the point. Poised between the sweeping generality of the naturalist and the particularism of the fancier, Darwin's
discussion of the pigeon was almost entirely an attempt to prove conclusively
what for others had been obvious or irrelevant, that the incredible diversity of the
domestic pigeons was indeed countered by the unity of their origin.
In all his extended accounts of this problem Darwin began from the fancier's
particularist viewpoint, with an enumeration of the chief varieties of the domestic
pigeon.59 "The diversity of the breeds is something astonishing," he wrote in the
Origin, going on to describe the tiny beak of the tumbler, the large size of runts
and carriers, and the strange coos of laughers and trumpeters.60 Next he proceeded to detail osteological variations, using his personal collection of pigeon
skeletons as well as information from the holdings of the British Museum and
elsewhere. These measurements were then compared with those of the rock
pigeon in order to highlight their differences. As Darwin confessed in the Variation under Domestication, his measurements on the wild rock pigeon were based
on only two birds, and originally he planned to have but one. Without knowing
the variation of his standard, readers much have been highly suspicious of his
comparisons with other birds. One can hardly call Darwin's work in this instance
"population thinking," although he certainly was aware of a problem.6' Aside
from this difficulty Darwin described the diversity of the fancy pigeons in great
detail, particularly in the Variation under Domestication. The two chapters on
pigeons in this work came complete with illustrations-a highly effective feature
not found in the Origin and apparently now included only at the suggestion of
Huxley.62
In the second of these two chapters, as in the corresponding pages of the
Origin, Darwin developed the other side of the question. As he admitted, the
distinctive races enumerated in his previous pages would be of little importance
for his argument unless they had all arisen from a single ancestral species.
59See Stauffer, ed., Natural Selection, pp. 25-26, later incorporated with changes of order and
some additions as the two chapters on pigeons in Variation, Vol. I, pp. 131-224; and the abstracted
discussion of several pages in the Origin itself, pp. 20-29.
60Origin,
p. 21.
6 1Variation,
Vol. I, p. 163. Several authors have stressed Darwin's "population thinking"; see
especially Ernst Mayr's introduction, Origin, pp. xviii-xx.
62 "I had not thought of illustrations," Darwin wrote in reference to his long discussion of pigeons,
"that is capital advice." Darwin to Huxley, 16 Dec. [1859], More Letters, Vol. I, p. 131. The Origin,
of course, has no illustrations whatsoever (except for the divergence diagram), highly unusual for a
19th-century work in natural history.
180
JAMES A. SECORD
Looking at them from the point of view of an experienced fancier, Darwin even
confessed his initial doubts about a single progenitor:
Nor am I surprisedat any degree of hesitation in admittingtheir common origin:
formerly, when I went into my aviariesand watched such birds as pouters, carriers,
barbs, fantails, and short-facedtumblers,&c., I could not persuademyself that they
had all descended from the same wild stock, and that men had consequentlyin one
sense createdthese remarkablemodifications.ThereforeI have arguedthe questionof
their origin at great, and, as some will think, superfluouslength.63
Perhaps these doubts were feigned, to assure the reader skeptical of Darwin's
objectivity. However, Darwin was forced to concede a multiple origin for many
of the other domesticated species he considered, including cattle, dogs, and pigs;
his proofs in the case of the pigeons were more than mere window dressing.
In the Origin and the Variation under Domestication Darwin gave six reasons
for believing that the fancy pigeons descended from a single wild stock. A few of
these reasons had been mentioned by Yarrell and other natural history authors in
passing, but Darwin's was the first systematic exposition of the issue.
* The number of wild progenitors would necessarily be at least seven or eight if
the fancy types had been produced by crossing; most of these originals would
have to be extinct or unknown.
* The ancestral species would have to be capable of domestication, which is in
itself a rather unusual property.
* None of these domesticated pigeon "species" have returned to the natural
state, and yet this would be expected if they were already closely related to their
wild progenitors.
* If these distinct ancestral species had existed originally, men would have
chosen a very strangely modified set of birds, different from all existing members
of the family.
* All the domestic pigeons can be intercrossed, producing fertile offspring.
This had been the main subject of Darwin's own breeding experiments, as it was
not the usual practice of fanciers to cross distinct varieties; for the most part, as
has been shown, they preferred to develop a relatively pure line leading to an
ideal type.
* Outside of a few distinct characteristics, the fancy pigeons bear a fundamental similarity to the rock pigeon-both in habits and in general structurethat they share with no other bird. Even the most highly bred fancy pigeons
occasionally revert to some variant of the slaty-blue color of the rock pigeon.64
These evidences for the origin of the fancy pigeon and the earlier discussion of
their diversity combine most strikingly in the classification of the domestic pigeon
found in the Variation under Domestication (Fig. 3). As far as I am aware, this
was the only occasion on which Darwin constructed an explicit evolutionary
tree, relating a specific group of organisms to one another through lines of
descent. Darwin divided the domestic pigeons into four separate groups, each
with a number of subgroups, races, and subraces. By using dotted lines of
varying lengths he created a visual equivalent of the interlocking system of
affinities that he saw in nature; by using both domestic and foreign varieties of
63Variation, Vol. I, pp. 203-204; also pp. 180, 187.
64Ibid., pp. 188-207; Origin, pp. 23-27.
181
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
LIVIA on ROCK-PIGEON.
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The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London, 1868), Vol. I, p. 136.
fancy pigeon Darwin put links in a chain of descent that would otherwise appear
broken. Through his evolutionary classification he tied the Almond Tumbler with
the rock pigeon, uniting the vision of Eaton with that of the naturalists:
Finally, in regardto the whole groupof Tumblers,it is impossibleto conceive a more
perfect gradation than I have now lying before me, from the rock-pigeon,through
Persian, Lotan, and CommonTumblers,up to the marvellousshort-facedbirds;which
latter, no ornithologist,judgingfrommere externalstructure,would place in the same
genus with the rock-pigeon.65
Although Darwin was willing to link the tumblers together, he was not entirely
sure of their precise affinities with the other short-beaked pigeons. Thus his third
group (comprising fantails, tumblers, owls, frillbacks, and jacobins) was explicitly
"artificial," "'a heterogeneous collection of distinct forms." This group was the
only one of Darwin's four divisions not tied by descent, and yet its presence
illustrates Darwin's caution in making his chart. While the extreme forms were
easily distinguished, the intermediate varieties linked them into a seamless web
without obvious divisions. This, Darwin felt, was a problem involved in making
any natural classification. In attempting such a "natural" classification of an
"artificially" produced set of organisms, he was highly attuned to the difficulties
of taxonomic procedure:
A good classificationof the variousdomesticbreedsis extremelydifficult,owingto the
manner in which many of the forms graduateinto each other; but it is curioushow
exactly the same difficultiesare encountered,and the same rules have to be followed,
as in the classificationof any naturalbut difficultgroup of organicbeings.66
65Variation, Vol. I, pp. 131-158; quoting p. 153.
66Ibid., pp. 146, 133.
JAMES A. SECORD
182
Darwin's classificatory methods relied entirely on the traditional characters (particularly ihe beak) used by ornithologists to divide wild birds. Thus he left
taxonomical practice essentially unchanged while investing the resulting classification with an evolutionary significance.
In this passage Darwin suggested the utility of the study of domesticated birds
for the naturalist. Having securely established both the unity and the diversity of
the fancy pigeon, he was free to play back and forth between the two views, trying
to make his readers see them first as a fancier might, and then as a naturalist. In
the exhaustive discussion of the origin of the fancy pigeons, Darwin speaks with a
thoroughness born of his experience as a breeder. In the Origin he explicitly
compares the situation of the fancier with that of the naturalist:
... when I first kept pigeons and watched the several kinds, knowingwell how true
they bred, I felt fully as much difficulty in believing that they could ever have
descended from a common parent, as any naturalistcould in coming to a similar
conclusion in regardto the many species of finches, or other large groupsof birds, in
nature.67
It is hardly accidental that Darwin should have chosen the finches as a natural
example of an evolutionary situation produced artificially in pigeons. The Galapagos Islands, with their isolated fauna and unusual environment, could now be
seen as the natural equivalent of an aviary. Darwin turned the contempt of
naturalists for the "narrow" views of the community of animal breeders back
upon themselves, from a liability into a positive advantage: the picture naturalists
had created of a lowly art was in fact a mirror of their own practice in science.
Darwin in this way intimated that the views of natural scientists on species in
nature could be as limited as those of a breeder with an eye only for his prize
fantails. As part of his strategy Darwin to some degree distorted the real concerns
of the fanciers by exaggerating their interest in issues of origin and classification,
questions that belonged in the world of natural history. But this device allowed
his primary audience (who after all were naturalists and not pigeon fanciers) to
imagine the domestic pigeons as a naturally produced class of objects rather than
one made by man. Darwin's readers were thus prepared to accept a similar
diversity of interrelated forms in the wild. Looking at the fancy pigeons as if they
had been produced by nature, an ornithologist would mistakenly put them into
more than one genus and a host of separate species. "May not those naturalists,"
Darwin wrote, ". . . learn a lesson of caution, when they deride the idea of
species in a state of nature being lineal descendants of other species?"68 By
assimilating the fancy pigeons into the perceptual world of the naturalist at the
very commencement of the Origin, Darwin hoped to make his readers see nature
itself in a new light in the later chapters of the book.
DARWIN ON PIGEONS (II): THE PROCESS OF SELECTION
Darwin's analogy between the two views of the pigeon has so far compared the
naturalist in the wild directly to the fancier in his aviary. But the fancier had a
closer relation to his birds than did the natural history observer to the objects of
his study: in choosing and breeding his pigeons the fancier became the selecting
67Origin p. 28.
68Ibid., p. 29.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
183
agent itself. Darwin, in depicting nature in the guise of artifice, could transform
the canons of the fanciers into a description of the processes of natural selection.
Although a full discussion of Darwin's notions of selection would go far beyond
the confines of this article, it is worth examining how Darwin used his pigeonfancying experience when explaining and elaborating his ideas.
In discussing the methods of the breeders, Darwin distinguished carefully
between two principal types of selection. The first, "methodical selection,"
involved conscious action by the fancier on his own birds, the preservation or
creation of an already foreseen change. When a fancier attempted to retain a
large variation or "sport" (such as a new shade or an added tail feather), he
proceeded with a distinct goal-to keep the desired alteration, or perhaps to
match it with some other bird to obtain a specifically desired grouping of characteristics. Methodical selection in domestic breeding presented few problems for
Darwin; it fit, he said, the usual conception of how artificial selection acted.69
Darwin's second and most important type was "unconscious selection." Stepping back from the day-to-day activities of the breeders, he saw that underlying
the individual crossings and pairings were much greater changes taking place in
the whole population of domestic pigeons. Just as Adam Smith's invisible hand of
the economic realm brought the actions of competitive individuals into a functioning whole, so unconscious selection resulted from the actions of thousands of
individual fanciers, thinking only of their own ends in pursuing their hobby. The
fancier, in buying the best birds he could afford and matching only the strongest
and most desirable specimens, worked long-term changes of which he generally
neither knew nor cared. As Darwin wrote:
The action of unconsciousselection, as far as pigeons are concerned, depends on a
universalprinciplein humannature, namely, on our rivalry,and desire to outdo our
neighbours. We see this in every fleeting fashion, even in our dress, and it leads the
fancier to endeavourto exaggerateevery peculiarityin his breed.
The practice of the breeders allowed of no doubt that such minute differences
were inherited. "Hard cash paid down, over and over again," Darwin wrote in a
later passage, "is an excellent test of inherited superiority."70
Much of Darwin's evidence for the action of unconscious selection came from
the historical record. "I have found my careful work at pigeons really invaluable . . . ," he wrote in a letter. "The copious old literature, by which I can trace
the gradual changes in the breeds of pigeons has been extraordinarily useful to
me."'71 Darwin claimed that in ancient times pigeon fanciers probably placed
more emphasis on the selection of sudden variants; with the rise of distinct
breeds, most of the evident deviations from the accepted standard were immediately rejected. In turning to a literature on breeding that extended back to
the Old Testament, Darwin found a source that he could treat as a "domesticated" version of a geological record. Darwin's famous (and commonplace)
analogy between the strata and a book is given a literal form in the records
69Variation, Vol. I, pp. 212-214. The role of this kind of selection in nature was far more
problematical, and led in part to the difficulties with Fleeming Jenkin; see Peter Vorzimmer, Charles
Darwin: The Years of Controversy: The Origin of Species and Its Critics, 1859-1882 (Philadelphia:
Temple Univ. Press, 1970).
70Variation, Vol. I, p. 215; Vol. II, p. 3.
71C. Darwin to W. D. Fox, 3 Oct. [1856], Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 84.
184
JAMES A. SECORD
of history concerning the pigeon. "To compare very small things with great," he
wrote in response to a criticism of the Origin, "Lingula, etc., remaining nearly
unaltered from the Silurian epoch to the present day, is like the dovecot pigeons
still being identical with wild Rock-pigeons, whereas its 'fancy' offspring have been
immensely modified, and are still being modified, by means of artificial selection."72 Like the geological record, the fancying literature was characterized by
immense and important omissions. Because of the secretiveness of the fancy,
large changes would not be recorded, while smaller, individual differences would
not be remembered because of their seeming insignificance.73 The record was
tolerably complete only after 1600, when the principal breeds of pigeon had
already separated; likewise, the fossil sequence was missing virtually all its early
chapters.
The development of the fancying clubs after 1720 was of particular importance
for the improvement of the records available to Darwin. "Their past," Fulton
noted, "is the past of the fancy itself." The ordinances of the original Columbarian, printed in 1764, for example, showed that a considerable improvement
had since taken place in Eaton's beloved Almond Tumblers. "All I can say is that
they were nothing to boast of," Eaton wrote of these early specimens. According
to Darwin, the only requirement for the production of the extreme divergence
represented by the Almond Tumbler was a variation "sufficiently marked to
catch the discriminating eye of some ancient fancier"; unconscious selection,
extending almost unnoticed for generations, would cumulate such changes indefinitely.
Darwin predicted that some would object that fanciers, ancient or modern,
would not be able to select such slight differences-the peculiarities would remain
unobservable and unexaggerated, even over a period of centuries. Here Darwin
asserted his credentials, a firsthand experience with breeders held by few other
naturalists:
Those alone who have associated with fanciers can be thoroughlyaware of their
accurate powers of discriminationacquired by long practice, and of the care and
labourwhich they bestow on their birds. I have knowna fancierdeliberatelystudyhis
birds day after day to settle which to match together and which to reject.75
In discussing Darwin's discovery of natural selection, Ernst Mayr has reemphasized the part domestic selection played in allowing Darwin to see such tiny
differences as a source of variation. While pigeon keeping can claim no special
role in the discovery, it clearly served Darwin as an illustration and confirmation
of the power of selection over individual variants.76 By stressing such small
variations Darwin was able to insist on the efficacy of unconscious selection over
its methodical counterpart, a type of selection that to a far greater degree relied
72C. Darwin to W. H. Harvey, [Aug.1860], More Letters, Vol. I, p. 164.
73Darwin, Variation, Vol. I, p. 213; Darwin's historical discussion of pigeons is found on pp. 207213. See also Origin, pp. 27-28.
74Fulton, Illustrated Book of Pigeons, p. 386; Eaton, Treatise (1858), pp. 186-187; Variation,
Vol. I, p. 217. For Darwin's use of different types of variation, see Peter J. Bowler, "Darwin's
Concepts of Variation," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1974, 29:196-212.
75Variation, Vol. I, p. 216.
76Ernst Mayr, "Darwin and Natural Selection," American Scientist, 1977, 65:321-327. The work
on barnacles led naturally to the work on pigeons, and artificially selected organisms gave an insight
into a process of variation already observed in the wild.
CHARLES DARWIN AND THE BREEDING OF PIGEONS
185
on large jumps. One might argue that the difference between the two modes of
selection was not so great as Darwin claimed. Many fanciers (such as Eaton) were
fully conscious of the long-term improvements of the breed and saw them as a
major aim of the fancy; Robert Fulton included a brief history of the London
fancying clubs in his book so as to acknowledge their role in handing down
improved birds to succeeding generations.77
But Darwin had good reasons for distinguishing methodical from unconscious
selection and for downgrading the relative importance of the former. If the
analogy with natural selection was to work, the element in artificial selection of
conscious, careful planning by the breeder had to be minimized. Otherwise critics
could claim that natural selection, like its artificial counterpart, demanded design
-a purposeful direction ordained by an omniscient authority. Arguing with Lyell
about the role of design in evolution, Darwin stressed the gradual character of the
most important changes wrought by the breeders. "By the selection of analogous
and less differences fanciers make almost generic differences in their pigeons; and
can you see any good reason why the Natural Selection of analogous individual
differences should not make new species?"78 By pointing out the changes produced by the selection of the most insignificant variations in the pigeon, Darwin
hoped to extend the analogy to nature without imputing design. The Reverend
Dixon's fear-that the study of fancy pigeons would lead to a reduction of God's
role in the world-had been realized, and in a completely unexpected manner.."
Dixon and those who came before him thought that the evolutionary production
of fancy varieties from the parent rock pigeon could only have occurred by means
of large variations and "monsters." Darwin, with his emphasis on the unconscious selection of individual differences, was able to get around this problem,
turning his knowledge of the fanciers' selection methods into a critique of their
limited views of how far divergence could proceed. In his own copy of Dixon's
The Dovecot and the Aviary Darwin marked a passage stressing the need for such
sudden jumps with an emphatic "no."80
CONCLUSION
Huxley, lecturing on the species problem, found it necessary to apologize for
the lack of a firsthand knowledge of an important part of his subject matter.
Huxley recognized that there "may be some among you who may be pigeon
fanciers, and I wish you to understand that in approaching the subject, I would
speak with all humility and hesitation, as I regret to say I am not a pigeon
77 Fulton, Illustrated Book of Pigeons, pp. 384-386.
78C. Darwin to C. Lyell, 21 Aug. [1861], More Letters, Vol. I, pp. 193-194. The rock pigeon also
figured prominently in the famous Huxley-Wilberforce debate at Oxford in 1860; see L. Huxley, Life
and Letters of T. H. Huxley, Vol. I (London: Macmillan, 1900), p. 183.
79Dixon, Dovecot, pp. 72-85, 68-69. For an excellent analysis of Darwin's attempts to avoid
divine interference in natural events, see Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of
Creation (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979). See also Robert M. Young, "Darwin's Metaphor:
Does Nature Select?" Monist, 1971, 55:442-503, and Edward Manier, The Young Darwin and his
Cultural Circle (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978).
80Dixon, Dovecot, p. 76; Darwin Library copy, Cambridge University Library. The marked
passage reads as follows: "The process, or rather, we believe, the project for the creation of new
species by Man, runs on smoothly enough in the prospectus here given; but what people, who are
sceptical about the result, want, is, the sudden appearance in a Dovecote of blue Rock Pigeons, of
two nestlings as much differing from their parents, as the Fantail or Turbit, do from them. These
instances are not recorded...."
186
JAMES A. SECORD
fancier."'" We have seen that Darwin, on the contrary, was able to assert
impressive credentials after his special study of the pigeon. He had immersed
himself for three years in the conceptual and social world of the fanciers, what
Thomas Kuhn might call its "disciplinary matrix"-if pigeon fancying were in fact
a science, rather than what Huxley called a "great art and mystery."82 As many
authors have suggested, scientific innovation often depends on borrowings from
outside the usual boundaries of a body of knowledge. In the case of Darwin's
work on pigeons these boundaries were socially as well as intellectually defined.
Almost alone among the theoretical naturalists of his time Darwin had the
patience to join the pigeon clubs, read the Poultry Chronicle, and visit the Crystal
Palace and Anerley Shows. In a world removed from orthodox natural history, he
associated with men well beneath him in income, birth, and education. Much of
Darwin's stature as a scientist lies in the thoroughness and enthusiasm with which
he entered into new (and sometimes alien) fields of research; the same tenacity
that led him into the byways of fancying lore lent depth and authority to his discussions of a whole range of issues touched on in the Origin, from barnacle
systematics to botanical distribution.
"In scientific investigations," Darwin wrote, "it is permitted to invent any
hypothesis, and if it explains various large and independent classes of facts it rises
to the rank of a well-grounded theory."83 Following out the consequences of his
methodological canon with a vengeance, Darwin explored all possible means of
supporting the theory of natural selection prior to putting it before the public. The
Darwinian Revolution-if its author could have had his way-would have been a
fait accompli, with all the supporting evidence in place at publication. Darwin's
concern to amass "facts" was more than a delaying tactic; for him and his contemporaries such activity was a vital part of scientific work. His interest in pigeons
-and in the fancying community-can thus scarcely be characterized as something used in the formation of the theory of natural selection, but then thrown out
in the final exposition as an object extraneous to science; for he became involved
with the fancy only after the main points of the theory were developed. As we
have seen, the pigeon was poised between unity and diversity, the generality of
the naturalist and the particularism of the fancier. Darwin focused on an evolutionary classification that connected the two groups, elaborating a genetic relationship that had generally been taken for granted or ignored. In addition he
gained essential insights into the processes of selection and inheritance and
confirmed his belief in the importance of individual differences. In each case
Darwin was extending an analogy-between the fancier in his aviary and the
naturalist in the wild, between the fossil record and the historical records of
pigeon breeding, between selection by nature and selection by man. Nature,
Darwin had discovered, was like Eaton or the members of the Philoperisteron:
she had a fancy, one that could be expressed in the theory of natural selection.
81T. H. Huxley, "On our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature (Six
Lectures to Working Men.-1863))"
Collected Essays, Vol. II (London: Macmillan, 1893), pp.
411-412.
82Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1970), postscript. For an application of some of Kuhn's criteria to a nonscientific subject (gangsterism) see Paul Feyerabend, "Consolations for the Specialist," in Criticism and the Growth of
Knowledge, eds. I. Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970), pp.
199-201.
83Variation, Vol. I, p. 8.