The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (2-Volume Set)

About this book

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. In volume 2, concerned with how species inherit particular characteristics, Darwin first published his 'provisional hypothesis' of pangenesis, and challenged the theories of evolution by design. 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.

Contents

Volume I

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


Volume II

12. Inheritance
13. Inheritance continued: reversion or atavism
14. Inheritance continued: fixedness of character, prepotency, sexual limitation correspondence of age
15. On crossing
16. Causes which interfere with the free crossing of varieties, influence of domestication on fertility
17. On the good effects of crossing, and on the evil effects of close interbreeding
18. On the advantages and disadvantages of changed conditions of life: sterility form various causes
19. Summary of the four last chapters, with remarks on hybridism
20. Selection by man
21. Selection continued
22. Causes of variability
23. Direct and definite action of the external conditions of life
24. Laws of variation, use and disuse, etc.
25. Laws of variation continued, correlated variability
26. Laws of variation continued, summary
27. Provisional hypothesis of pangenesis
28. Concluding remarks
Index

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