Charles Darwin Read online

  Darwin’s hyperactive mind, in its unceasing quest for knowledge and explanation, roamed across the whole spectrum of natural history and attempted to answer such questions as why species were abundant in certain areas rather than in others? What factors limit the increase of a given species? What was the role of water or air currents in transporting species from one part of the planet to another? Why do sea shells found at opposite ends of the Panama Canal differ from each other? What causes earthquakes? Was the ability of a dog to identify a scent left by another animal an inherited quality?

  Darwin wrote to zoologist and botanist the Reverend Leonard Jenyns, on 12 October to say,

  I have continued steadily reading & collecting facts on variation of domestic animals & plants & on the question of what are species; I have a grand body of facts & I think I can draw some sound conclusions. The general conclusion at which I have slowly been driven from a directly opposite conviction is that species are mutable [liable to change18] & that allied species are codescendants of common stocks.19

  In his letter to Hooker of 10 September 1845 Darwin states that comparative anatomist Professor Richard Owen

  is vehemently opposed to any mutability in species … . Lamarck is the only exception, that I can think of, of an accurate describer of species at least in the Invertebrate kingdom, who has disbelieved in permanent species, but he in his absurd though clever work has done the subject harm … .20

  In early October, Darwin commiserated with Hooker, who had learnt that he had failed in his attempt to be elected to Edinburgh University’s Chair of Botany.

  When, in that same month, Darwin visited Chatsworth House in Derbyshire – seat of the Dukes of Devonshire – he was, in his words, ‘like a child, transported with delight’. This delight was not, as might be guessed, with the house itself, but with ‘the great Hot house [heated glasshouse, where plants are reared], and exotic plants building, & especially the water part, [which] is more wonderfully like tropical nature, than I could have conceived possible’.21

  Emma’s mother, Elizabeth Wedgwood, died on 31 March 1846. In that year, the first major extension was made to Down House, to include a schoolroom for the children and new accommodation for the household staff. The estimated cost was £300, and Darwin hoped that the ‘Shrewsbury conclave’ – i.e. his family – would not condemn him for such ‘extreme extravagance’, but, as he told his sister Susan, ‘It seemed so selfish to make the house so luxurious for ourselves and not comfortable for our servants…’.22

  When Charles Lyell received a knighthood, Darwin wrote on 24 September 1848 to congratulate him.23

  Dr Robert Darwin died on 13 November. Said Darwin to Hooker,

  no one who did not know him would believe that a man above eighty-three years old could have retained so tender and affectionate a disposition, with all his sagacity unclouded to the last. I was at the time unable to travel, which added to my misery.24

  It is a measure of the incapacitating nature of Darwin’s illness, that he had been unable to attend the funeral of his beloved father, which must indeed have been a great sadness to him.

  To Hooker, on 13 June 1849, Darwin described how variation in species made classification difficult.

  When the same organ is RIGOROUSLY compared in many individuals, I always find some slight variability, and consequently that the diagnosis of species from minute differences is always dangerous. Systematic work would be easy were it not for this confounded variation, which, however, is pleasant to me as a speculatist, though odious to me as a systematist.25

  Again in a letter to Hooker, of 25 September 1853, he returned to the same theme.

  After describing a set of forms as different species, tearing up my MS [manuscript], and making them one species, tearing that up and making them separate, and them making them one again …, I have gnashed my teeth, cursed species, and asked what sin I have committed to be so punished.26

  The problem confronting Darwin was that, however much species are subdivided into subspecies, variations in these subspecies continue to be observed.

  The voyage of the Beagle, and the visit to the Galapagos Islands in particular, had provided Darwin with the vital clues to the fact that species were not immutable.

  From September 1854 I devoted my whole time to arranging my huge pile of notes, to observing, and to experimenting in relation to the transmutation [the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form, or the transformation of one species into another27] of species. During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the [Argentinian] Pampean formation [consisting of loess – deposits of silt, which cover the Pampas – the extensive, treeless plains of South America] great fossil animals covered with armour like that on the existing armadillos; secondly by the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southward over the Continent; and thirdly, by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group; none of the islands appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense.

  It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me.28

  Surely, Darwin should have rejoiced to think that he might have solved the problem of variation in the Galapagos; so why did he use the word ‘haunted’? Was it because he anticipated, with alarm and dread, the proverbial coals of fire which, were he to publish his findings and conclusions, would surely be heaped upon his head by outraged Christian Biblical ‘Creationists’, whose default position, come what may, was to be found in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis. This states that, in a period of six days, God made the Earth, including its ‘grass, herb-yielding seed, fruit trees, fowls, cattle, creeping things, beasts’, and ‘fish’, until finally, on the sixth day ‘God created man in his own image … male and female he created them’.29

  In that year, 1854, Darwin was awarded the Royal Society’s Royal Medal for his work on Cirripedia (barnacles).

  I am hard at work on my notes, collating & comparing them, in order [in] some 2 or 3 years to write a book with all the facts & arguments, which I can collect, for and versus the immutability of species.30

  Many more honours would accrue to Darwin in the years to come. However this did not lead him to become arrogant. He was content to live a simple life, loathed ostentatiousness, dressed sombrely, did not crave material possessions, and continued to treat all and sundry with courtesy and consideration.

  Meanwhile, he spent his time cultivating and cataloguing, breeding and crossbreeding plants and pigeons; amassing data relating to the cross-breeding of domestic dogs; exchanging information, ideas, and specimens of flora and fauna, not only with Hooker, Henslow, and many others in Britain, but also with his contacts in places as far afield as India, Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), and Norway. He also found time to compose articles for the Gardeners’ Chronicle.

  In June 1855, Hooker indicated to Darwin that the two were as one in regard to the subject of transmutation. Said he:

  it is very easy to talk of the creation of a species in the Lyellian view of creation but the idea is no more tangible than that of the Trinity & to be really firmly & implicitly believed is neither more or less than a superstition – a believing in what the human mind cannot grasp.

  Charles Lyell believed that ‘new species were being continually created to replace those that had become extinct because of changes in the environment’.31

  It is much easier to believe with you in transmutation, until you work back to the vital spark – a vis creatrix [life-giving force] or whatever you may call it …32

  Hooker continued: ‘Lyell, it seems, still required some convincing about Darwin’s great theory.’

  NOTES

  1. Darwin to John Stevens Henslow, 3 November 1838, Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 42
9a.

  2. Litchfield, Henrietta, Emma Darwin:A Century of Family Letters 1792–1896, Volume II, p.1. Darwin to Lyell, [12 November 1838].

  3. Emma to Madame Sismondi, 15 November 1838, Litchfield, Henrietta. Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters 1792–1896, Volume II, p.6.

  4. Darwin: ‘Questions for Mr Wynne’, February-July 1838. Cor.2, p.70.

  5. Darwin to Emma, 2 January 1839, Litchfield, Henrietta. Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters 1792–1896, Volume II, pp.20–1.

  6. Darwin to Emma, 20 January 1839, Litchfield, op. cit., p.25.

  7. Ibid, Volume II, pp.31–2. Emma to Elizabeth Wedgwood, 5 February 1839.

  8. Elizabeth Wedgwood to Madame Sismondi, 5 June 1839, Litchfield, op. cit., p.43.

  9. Darwin to W. D. Fox, 24 October 1839, Cor.2, p.234.

  10. Darwin, Francis. Autobiography of Charles Darwin, p.43.

  11. Darwin to Gardeners’ Chronicle, 16 August 1841, Cor.2, p.300.

  12. Reeve, Tori, Down House: the Home of Charles Darwin, p.27

  13. Ibid, p.6.

  14. Darwin to Robert FitzRoy, 31 March 1843, Cor.2, p.354.

  15. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  16. Darwin to G. R. Waterhouse, 26 July 1843, Cor.2, pp.375–6.

  17. Darwin to Joseph Dalton Hooker, 11 January 1844, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: Volume 3, 1844–1846, p.2.

  18. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  19. Darwin to Leonard Jenyns, 12 October 1844, Cor.3, p.67.

  20. Darwin to J. D. Hooker [10 September 1845], Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 915.

  21. Darwin to J. S. Henslow, 28 October 1845, Cor.3, p.260

  22. Darwin to S.E. Darwin, 3 September 1845, Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 913.

  23. Cor.4, p.167.

  24. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 28 March [1849], Darwin, Francis (editor), The Life of Charles Darwin, p.174.

  25. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 13 June [1849], Darwin, Francis. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, Volume II, p.356.

  26. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 25 September [1853], Darwin, Francis, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, Volume II, p.359.

  27. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  28. Darwin, Francis, Autobiography of Charles Darwin, pp.55–6.

  29. Genesis, 1:1–27.

  30. Darwin to W. D. Fox, 19 March [1855], The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: Volume 5, 1851–1855, p.288.

  31. Cor.5, p.346, note 4.

  32. J. D. Hooker to Darwin, 6–9 June 1855, Cor.5, p.345.

  Chapter 13

  A Rival Appears on the Scene: Darwin’s Hand is Forced

  In September 1855 an article was published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Its author was Alfred Russel Wallace and it was to have profound implications for Darwin, who did not become aware of it until the summer of 1857.

  Wallace, born at Usk, in Monmouthshire, South Wales on 8 January 1823, was the son of Thomas Vere Wallace, an attorney-at-law and his wife Mary Anne, née Greenell. He was therefore almost fourteen years younger than Darwin.

  It was originally intended that Wallace should become a land surveyor, but in 1837, whilst he was residing with his brother, William in Bedfordshire he became interested in the science of geology. In this, and in other respects, his life was to run in a manner uncannily parallel to that of Darwin.

  My brother, like most land-surveyors, was something of a geologist, and he showed me the fossil oysters of the genus Gryphaea and the Belemnites … and several other fossils which were abundant in the chalk and gravel around Barton [(Barton-in-the-Clay, near Luton].1

  Here, said Wallace

  during my solitary rambles I first began to feel the influence of nature … . At that time I hardly realized that there was such a science as systematic botany, that every flower and every meanest and insignificant weed had been accurately described and classified, and that there was any kind of system and order in the endless variety of plants and animals which I knew existed.2

  Having, at the age of twenty-one, found employment as a teacher of English in Leicester, Wallace visited that city’s ‘very good town library’, where

  perhaps the most important book I read was Malthus’s Principles of Population [a volume also familiar to Darwin, as already mentioned] which I greatly admired for its masterly summary of facts and logical induction to conclusions.3

  It was at Leicester that Wallace met the entomologist Henry Walter Bates, whose speciality was ‘beetle collecting’, and who also had ‘a good set of British butterflies’.4 It was here, also, that Wallace was ‘first introduced’ to the subject of ‘psychical research’.5

  Having relocated to Neath in South Wales, where he was employed as a surveyor, Wallace read Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (published in 1844) by Robert Chambers, and ‘was much impressed by it’.6

  Robert Chambers

  Robert Chambers (1802–71) was a Scottish publisher and geologist. In his book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (first published anonymously), he gave a lucid account of how

  a comparatively small variety of species is found in the older rocks … [whereas] ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life become more abundant, the number of species extended, and important additions made in certain vestiges of fuci [seaweed] or sea-plants, and of fishes.7

  We thus early begin to find proofs of the general uniformity of organic life over the surface of the earth at the time when each particular system of rocks was formed.8

  Finally, Chambers was able to say

  We have now completed our survey of the series of stratified rocks, and traced in their fossils the progress of organic creation down to a time which seems not long antecedent to the appearance of man.9

  Variation

  Like Darwin, Chambers struggled to explain how ‘new varieties’, both in the animal and plant kingdoms, were created. ‘We are ignorant of the laws of variety-production; but we see it going on as a principle in nature … .’10

  The origin of life

  ‘Whether mankind is of one or many origins’, said Chambers, was ‘still an open question’.

  A ‘Designer/Creator’

  It has been one of the most agreeable tasks of modern science to trace the wonderfully exact adaptations of the organization [i.e. structure] of animals to the physical circumstances amidst which they are destined to live. From the mandibles of insects to the hand of man, all is seen to be in the most harmonious relation to the things of the outward world, thus clearly proving that DESIGN presided in the creation of the whole – design again implying a designer, another word for a CREATOR.

  It would be tiresome to present in this place even a selection of the proofs which have been adduced on this point. The Natural Theology of [William] Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises [of William Buckland, geologist, palaeontologist, and Dean of Westminster], place the subject in so clear a light that the general postulate may be taken for granted.11

  The face of God is reflected in the organization of man, as a little pool reflects the glorious sun.12

  Clearly, therefore, Chambers subscribed, not to the theory of natural selection, but to that of a creator/designer – i.e. God. He concludes

  My sincere desire in the composition of the book (Vestiges) was to give the true view of the history of nature, with as little disturbance as possible to existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious.13

  In other words, to Chambers’s way of thinking, scientific truth must always be subordinated to religious dogma.

  To return to Wallace, he also mentions having read Darwin’s Journal, of which he said

  As the Journal of a scientific traveller, it is second only to Humboldt’s ‘Personal Narrative’ [which was one of Darwin’s favourite books] – as a work of general interest, [it is] perhaps superior to it.14

  It was on account of having read these works by Darwin and Humboldt,
said Wallace, that ‘I owe my determination to visit the tropics as a collector’.15 The outcome was that, on 20 April 1848, Wallace set sail from Liverpool en route to South America. Prior to his departure, however, ‘the great problem of the origin of species was already distinctly formulated in my mind’.

  I believed the conception of evolution [the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth16] through natural law so clearly formulated in the [Robert Chambers’s] Vestiges to be, so far as it went, a true one; and … I firmly believed that a full and careful study of the facts of nature would ultimately lead to a solution of the mystery.17

  Wallace describes ‘four years’ [of] wanderings in the Amazon valley’ – a length of time comparable with that spent away from home by Darwin during the long voyage of HMS Beagle.18 Also, like Darwin, Wallace became ill in the tropics, stating that, ‘my health … has suffered so much by a succession of fevers and dysentery …19’.

  On 6 August 1852, Wallace suffered another misfortune when the ship Helen, which was conveying him back to England, caught fire. ‘My collections … were in the hold, and were irretrievably lost.’ This included

  all my private collection of insects and birds … [which] comprised hundreds of new and beautiful species, which would have rendered (I had fondly hoped) my [display] cabinet, as far as regards American species, one of the finest in Europe.20

  Fortunately, prior to the shipwreck, Wallace had managed to send a small part of his collection home to England. He had also managed to salvage some of his drawings of fish, and his diary. Said he, ‘my collections had now made my name well known to the authorities of the Zoological and Entomological societies’, a fact which gave him an automatic entrée into their scientific meetings.21 Wallace finally arrived back to London on 5 October 1852.