Katharine Anderson (Editor). The Narrative of the Beagle Voyage, 1831–1836. 4 volumes. lxii + 1,511 pp., illus., tables, app., index. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012. £350, $625 (cloth).Charles Darwin. Journal de bord [Diary] du voyage du Beagle [1831–1836]. Translated by, Christiane Bernard and Marie-Thérèse Blanchon. 832 pp., illus., index. Paris: Éditions Honoré Champion, 2012. €29 (paper).

Isis ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 105 (4) ◽  
pp. 852-853
Author(s):  
Richard Bellon
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Beagle Voyage

William Yarrell (1784–1856), friend and adviser to Charles Darwin

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-114
Author(s):  
Christine E. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Beagle Voyage

For 25 years, from 1831 into 1856, the English zoologist William Yarrell was both a friend and adviser to Charles Darwin. He was regarded by Darwin as a wise and eminent naturalist of the older generation. Yarrell was part of a small group of naturalists, including Leonard Jenyns and John Stevens Henslow, whose interests in ornithology, entomology and geology expanded over the years. Their knowledge helped to support publication of the results of the HMS Beagle voyage and to inform Darwin while he was developing his hypotheses on evolution before the publication of On the Origin of Species, first published in 1859.

Evolutionary Writings

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Darwin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Global Impact ◽  
The World ◽  
Correspondence Project ◽  
Darwin Correspondence Project ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Controversial Nature ◽  
Beagle Voyage

‘Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.’ On topics ranging from intelligent design and climate change to the politics of gender and race, the evolutionary writings of Charles Darwin occupy a pivotal position in contemporary public debate. This volume brings together the key chapters of his most important and accessible books, including the Journal of Researches on the Beagle voyage (1845), the Origin of Species (1871), and the Descent of Man, along with the full text of his delightful autobiography. They are accompanied by generous selections of responses from Darwin’s nineteenth-century readers from across the world. More than anything, they give a keen sense of the controversial nature of Darwin’s ideas, and his position within Victorian debates about man’s place in nature. The wide-ranging introduction by James A. Secord, Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project, explores the global impact and origins of Darwin’s work and the reasons for its unparalleled significance today.

Charles Darwin on the Origin and Diversity of Igneous Rocks

1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Igneous Rocks ◽  
Melting Points ◽  
Granitic Gneiss ◽  
Igneous Petrology ◽  
Physical Separation ◽  
Basaltic Melts ◽  
Sinking And Floating ◽  
Beagle Voyage

Charles Darwin provided one of the first detailed explanations for the diversity of igneous rocks. Building on many observations made during the Beagle voyage, Darwin hypothesized that density differences among crystals within a mass of partially molten rock would result in their physical separation by sinking and floating. Such a process, he proposed, could be responsible for the separation of compositionally distinct lavas from a single source. This idea, in modified form, lies at the heart of the modern science of igneous petrology. Darwin also speculated that partial melting of rocks in the deeper regions of the Earth's crust could produce basaltic melts. However, due to his lack of knowledge of the melting points of the silicate minerals, and his misinterpretation of a puzzling field locality at Bahia in Brazil, he wrongly believed granitic gneiss to be the progenitor of these basalts. Despite this error, Darwin's igneous speculations show a characteristic blend of detailed observation and broader theorizing. Most interesting of all, striking analogies can be found between Darwin's igneous work and his theory of natural selection, which he developed at about the same time.

Charles Darwin

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Radick
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Fossil Species ◽  
Scientific Training ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Science Degree ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
University Science ◽  
Erasmus Darwin ◽  
Beagle Voyage

Anyone beginning to learn about Charles Darwin (b. 1809–d. 1882) will sooner or later need to reckon with the vast body of writings by him and about him. This bibliographic guide aims to help newcomers find their way to the best of classic and recent scholarship. As the major episodes and achievements of Darwin’s life organize the main part of this guide, it is well to start with a brief biographical sketch. Born and educated in the English town of Shrewsbury, Darwin attended Edinburgh University medical school and then Cambridge University, where he received clerical-scientific training. Next came five years traveling around the world aboard HMS Beagle (1831–1836), followed by several years of intense geological publishing and private theorizing from a base in London. It was in this period that Darwin developed many of his distinctive ideas about the evolution or, to use the vocabulary of the day, “transmutation” of species, including the two most important: that living and fossil species belong to a branching “tree of life;” and that much of the evolutionary change propelling the gradual growth of this tree is due to a process that Darwin called “natural selection.” The decades from 1842 to 1882, spent largely at Down House in Kent with his wife Emma and their ever more numerous children, were immensely productive, domestically contented, physically trying (due to a mysterious illness), and—after the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859—scientifically controversial. From start to finish, it was a life of great privilege. Darwin’s grandfathers were the pottery magnate Josiah Wedgwood and the physician, poet, and scientific (indeed evolutionary) thinker Erasmus Darwin. In an era when no one in Britain could study for a university science degree, young Charles received the best scientific education available, especially from the naturalist Robert Grant at Edinburgh and the geologist Adam Sedgwick and botanist John Stevens Henslow at Cambridge. Darwin’s costs on the Beagle voyage were covered courtesy of his wealthy father, Robert. On returning from the voyage, Darwin moved easily among the London scientific elite, becoming close with Charles Lyell, whose books on gradualist geology Darwin had absorbed. Nor did it hurt that, between Darwin family money and the Wedgwood family money that came with marriage to Emma (his first cousin), Darwin was very rich, leaving him free—when not undone by illness—to devote himself fully to his scientific pursuits.

“A most glorious country”: Charles Darwin and North Wales, especially his 1831 geological tour

2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LUCAS
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Circumstantial Evidence ◽  
North Wales ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Conventional Picture ◽  
Beagle Voyage ◽  
Hero Worship

Darwin's tour with Adam Sedgwick in 1831, the last of some 14 Welsh visits before the Beagle voyage, divides into three periods: a week, mostly with Sedgwick, from 5 August; a middle period ending by 20 August, when Sedgwick left Anglesey; and a final period during which Darwin spent some days in Barmouth, reaching Shrewsbury on 29 August. His activities are well documented, for the first period, through both men's geological notes and, for the last, in the journal of the Lowe brothers (showing Darwin reaching Barmouth from Ffestiniog on 23 August and parting from Robert Lowe on 29 August). For the middle period the circumstantial evidence points to Anglesey: whether Darwin's writings show any first hand knowledge of the island needs further examination. Robert Lowe was one of Darwin's most gifted contemporaries; his „early hero-worship” enhances the conventional picture of Darwin on the eve of the voyage. After his return to North Wales in 1842, to investigate the effects of glacial action, Darwin saw the tour as illustrating the futility of observations outside of any adequate theoretical framework.

scholarly journals Multilocus genotypes from Charles Darwin's finches: biodiversity lost since the voyage of the Beagle

2010 ◽  
Vol 365 (1543) ◽  
pp. 1009-1018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Petren ◽  
Peter R. Grant ◽  
B. Rosemary Grant ◽  
Andrew A. Clack ◽  
Ninnia V. Lescano
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Diversity ◽  
Genetic Analysis ◽  
Microsatellite Loci ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Museum Specimens ◽  
Darwin's Finches ◽  
Darwin’S Finches ◽  
Genetic Source ◽  
Autosomal Microsatellite Loci ◽  
Beagle Voyage

Genetic analysis of museum specimens offers a direct window into a past that can predate the loss of extinct forms. We genotyped 18 Galápagos finches collected by Charles Darwin and companions during the voyage of the Beagle in 1835, and 22 specimens collected in 1901. Our goals were to determine if significant genetic diversity has been lost since the Beagle voyage and to determine the genetic source of specimens for which the collection locale was not recorded. Using ‘ancient’ DNA techniques, we quantified variation at 14 autosomal microsatellite loci. Assignment tests showed several museum specimens genetically matched recently field-sampled birds from their island of origin. Some were misclassified or were difficult to classify. Darwin's exceptionally large ground finches ( Geospiza magnirostris ) from Floreana and San Cristóbal were genetically distinct from several other currently existing populations. Sharp-beaked ground finches ( Geospiza difficilis ) from Floreana and Isabela were also genetically distinct. These four populations are currently extinct, yet they were more genetically distinct from congeners than many other species of Darwin's finches are from each other. We conclude that a significant amount of the finch biodiversity observed and collected by Darwin has been lost since the voyage of the Beagle .

Charles Darwin as Geologist

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archibald Geikie
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin

The katydid that was: the tananá, stridulation, Henry Walter Bates and Charles Darwin

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio J. Bidau
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Bush Cricket

The Amazonian bush-cricket or katydid, Thliboscelus hypericifolius (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae: Pseudophyllinae), called tananá by the natives was reported to have a song so beautiful that they were kept in cages for the pleasure of listening to the melodious sound. The interchange of letters between Henry Walter Bates and Charles Darwin regarding the tananá and the issue of stridulation in Orthoptera indicates how this mysterious insect, which seems to be very rare, contributed to the theory of sexual selection developed by Darwin.

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