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<\/p>\nA convoluted (and somewhat disjointed) tale that dovetails my interests in evolution, Darwin and birds.<\/p>\n
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From an earlier post readers already know that as a pre-teen and young teenager I had an intense fascination with pigeons. I raised a variety of breeds including homers, rollers, tumblers, tipplers, helmets and fantails. Even at that age my interest bordered on academic. Here I am in front of my\u00a0 pigeon coop (1959?) which was made from scraps and was my first of many carpentry projects over the decades. I’m holding a book titled “The Pigeon” by Wendell M. Levi.<\/p>\n
“The Pigeon” was a highly technical book for someone my age but I devoured it, over and over, and it included a chapter on Charles Darwin’s work with domestic pigeons. Darwin bred pigeons in his garden, not as a hobby but as an experiment for his developing theory of evolution.<\/p>\n
That was my first significant introduction to both Darwin and evolution and I was fascinated by both.<\/p>\n
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My good friend Dennis Ehlert and yours truly on the patio of my family’s Poway, California home holding a couple of our favorite pigeons. That’s me on the left. Dennis introduced me to pigeon raising and I’ll be forever grateful. So will my dear departed mother who strongly encouraged my addiction to pigeon raising in those years because she believed it “kept me out of trouble”. She was right, mostly.<\/p>\n
OK, the next part of this post might seem a little fragmented and disorganized at first. I hope to connect all the pieces as we continue.<\/p>\n
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Wedgwood Bone China Hathaway Rose Bell<\/em><\/p>\n This is a fine bone china bell that I keep on a prominent shelf in a bookcase I built and installed in my living room. It might seem like a rather foofoo object for someone like me to have a near-obsession with but I’ll try to explain.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n It’s a Wedgwood bell, produced by the renowned fine china and porcelain company founded in England by Josiah Wedgwood in 1759. I suspect some, possibly many, of my readers own Wedgwood china and\/or porcelain.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I inherited the bell from my mother so I keep it right next to a photo taken of her on the occasion of her graduation from nursing school as an RN in Calgary, Alberta in about 1944.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emma Wedgwood 1840<\/em><\/p>\n This is Emma Wedgwood. Emma was the youngest child of Josiah Wedgwood II, son of Josiah Wedgwood of fine china and porcelain fame.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Charles Darwin, late 1830’s.<\/em><\/p>\n You may have seen this coming, Emma Wedgwood married Charles Darwin in 1839.<\/p>\n So for me that fact completes an almost perfect circle that encloses my interests in Darwin, evolution and pigeons and birds and connects them to the Wedgwood bell I inherited from my mother who nurtured my fascination with pigeons. It may be a convoluted connection but it’s there and it’s the reason I’m so fond of that silly (for me) bell.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But part of the extended story gets a little weird. Darwin famously wrote about how crossbreeding produces robust offspring (the well known ‘hybrid vigor’) while inbreeding tends to produce genetic weakness and\/or disease in the offspring.<\/span><\/p>\n It turns out that Darwin and Emma were first cousins. They had ten children but three of them died by the age of 10 and three others were childless even though they had long-term marriages. Several recent and not so recent studies strongly suggest that the reason for the high mortality rate and low fecundity rate in the Darwin children was because they were inbred.<\/p>\n Ironic, don’t you think?<\/p>\n Darwin actually worried about that possibility, especially when his first daughter Annie died at age 10. Annie was known to be his favorite child and he was devastated by her loss.<\/p>\n Even all these years later I feel sorry for Charles and Emma, in part because I’m sure that in their later years they were fully aware of the tragic irony.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A convoluted tale that dovetails my interests in evolution and birds.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wedgwood-bell-stamp-1191-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"wedgwood-bell-stamp-1191-ron-dudley.\\"")
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