Charles Darwin is celebrated for describing “natural selection”, the way organisms evolve through random small changes that fit them into particular environmental niches. But the 19th-century English naturalist was also fascinated by the far faster but more limited process of “artificial selection”, through which people could create new varieties of animals and plants by selective breeding. Darwin himself bred fancy pigeons. Yet, as he wrote in On the Origin of Species, the range of forms that “may be effected in the long course of time by nature’s power of selection” is infinitely greater than “feeble man” could achieve.
查尔斯•达尔文(Charles Darwin)因阐述“自然选择”而闻名，即生物通过随机的小变异进化，从而适应特定的环境生态位。但这位19世纪的英国博物学家也对“人工选择”着迷——一种更快却更受限的过程，人们可通过选择性繁育培育出新的动植物品种。达尔文本人还饲养过观赏鸽。然而，正如他在《物种起源》中所写，自然在漫长岁月中凭借其选择之力“可能产生”的形态范围，远远大于“软弱的人类”所能达成的。