"Darwin (1868) noted that the idea of a gradual reversion of domestic animals to a wild form "

Darwins observations were based mainly on domestic pigeons.  To use one example, if I mate a recessive red Fantail to a brown Pouter the young will be blue, have only 15 tail feathers in Darwin's day and hardly any tendency to pout.  This has nothing at all to do with reversion.  It has to do with recessive mutants in one breed being neutralized by dominants in the other breed and with our current knowledge of genetics should never be called reversion.  You have to remember that when Darwin lived nothing at all was known about genetics.  He was before Mendel.

Garden plants that "revert" are generally hybrids.  For example save seeds from a hybrid tomato and you can get all kinds of phenotypes.  On the other hand save seeds from a non hybrid and those seeds will reproduce the parents until a one in a million mutation happens.

I do know of an example of an iris that "reverts."  The color breaking iris named Batic is notorious for reverting to a plicata.  However, if you isolate those plicatas and grow them a few seasons they will "revert" to a color break identical to Batic.  This also is not really reversion.  Rather it likely is epigenetic in mechanism and temporary for that reason. 

Dick

HL Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. "

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