THE ANALOGY WAS RIGHT THERE BEFORE HIM BUT HE COULDN'T UNDERSTAND IT:

Darwin The Dog Lover: How canine companionship inspired evolutionary observations. (David Allan Feller, 02.05.09, Forbes)

A local Shrewsbury newspaper obituary for Charles Darwin in April 1882 noted that "Darwin, like [geologist Sir Roderick] Murchison, was a keen fox-hunter in his youth, and that it was in the field that his great habits of observation were first awakened." [...]

Darwin's interaction with dogs was not without scientific impact. Over these formative years, Darwin observed and questioned not only the behavior of dogs, and by analogy other animals, but studied their role in nature, their breeding and the relationships between all of these issues.

These years in the hunting field immersed Darwin in the wonders of nature and gave him a unique point of view as both a scientist and a participating predator. These qualities effectively allowed Darwin to take best advantage of the opportunities presented to him on the voyage of the Beagle, and afforded him an early sense that a selective process was the engine behind species development.

If only he'd gotten to see a wolf and a beagle get their freak on he might not have gone so far awry. Canines demonstrate the astonishing intractability of species, or, more accurately, genus.

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