than do the individuals of distinct species in a wild state: and even in
Nature the individuals of some species are known to vary to a degree
sensibly wider than that which separates related species. In his
instructive section on the breeds of the domestic pigeon, our author
remarks that "at least a score of pigeons might be chosen which if shown to
an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild birds, would
certainly be ranked by him as well-defined species. Moreover, I do not
believe that any ornithologist would place the English carrier, the
short-faced tumbler, the runt, the barb, pouter, and fantail, in the same
genus; more especially as in each of these breeds several truly-inherited
sub-breeds, or species, as he might have called them, could be shown him."
That this is not a case like that of dogs, in which probably the blood of
more than one species is mingled, Mr. Darwin proceeds to show, adducing
cogent reasons for the common opinion that all have descended from the wild
rock-pigeon. Then follow some suggestive remarks:


"I have discussed the probable origin of domestic pigeons at some, yet
quite insufficient, length; because when I first kept pigeons and watched
the several kinds, knowing well how true they bred, I felt fully as much
difficulty in believing that they could ever have descended from a common
parent as any naturalist could in coming to a similar conclusion in regard
to many species of finches, or other large groups of birds, in Nature. One
circumstance has struck me much; namely, that all the breeders of the
various domestic animals and the cultivators of plants, with whom I have
ever conversed, or whose treatises I have read, are firmly convinced that
the several breeds to which each has attended are descended from so many
aboriginally distinct species. Ask, as I have asked, a celebrated raiser of
Hereford cattle, whether his cattle might not have descended from
long-horns, and he will laugh you to scorn. I have never met a pigeon, or