La variazione degli animali e delle piante sotto la domesticazione

every other characteristic that Darwin attributed its exemplary plasticity to its derivation from several different species of wild canines. Domestic cats, on the other hand, differed relatively little from one another, at least, their variation tended to be individual, rather than consolidated into breeds. Darwin attributed this to the minimal influence exerted by cat owners over the mating behavior of their animals, so that, alone among fully domesticated animals, cats could not be said to have undergone a genuine process of artificial selection. Farmyard ungulates, however, had all proved more susceptible to human manipulation, whether through the gradual enhancement of inherent tendencies, such as the relatively early maturation that distinguished shorthorn cattle, or through the preservation of spontaneously arising monstrosities, such as the short, broad foreheads and protruding lower jaws of the niata cattle of South America, the bulldogs of the bovine world. Among animals, fancy pigeons, with their short generations, devoted breeders, and lack of any pragmatic constraints on their extravagant deformations, provided Darwin with his most abundant material. He allotted less space to his survey of domesticated plants, although, with the exception of trees, they tended to he much shorter lived and more variable even than pigeons. For example, as Darwin pointed out, a single long-cultivated species—_Brassica oleracea,_ the ordinary cabbage—had given rise to strains as distinctive as Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, and kohl-rabi. Darwin crammed in so much information of this sort that, in order to confine _Variation_ to two volumes of manageable size, less crucial evidence was relegated to a smaller typeface. And so compendious was his survey of domesticates that he felt constrained to deny that it was intended to he an exhaustive catalog.…