Wakahus INTRODUCTION. CHARLES DARWIN, the Newton of biology, as he has been well called, was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, physician, speculative naturalist and poet, and of Josiah Wedgwood, the great potter; and was born at Shrewsbury on the 12th February, 1809. From his father and paternal grandfather, both physicians, he may be presumed to have derived a leaning to natural history studies; and to his maternal grandfather he probably was indebted for his intensely practical methods of working. Schooling at Shrewsbury Grammar School, under a narrow classical system, did the youth no good except to let the real bent of his mind develop without coercion. As a youth he was fond of making collections of coins, seals, minerals, etc., and he also studied chemistry and tried to make out the names of plants. He became very fond of sporting and shooting as he grew up, and his father once said to him in anger, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family." Clearly the future great naturalist was not plainly discernible in the youth, though the father was doubtless unjust to the lad who took long solitary walks, and delighted in reading Shakespeare, Scott, and Byron. There was nothing, however, in Charles Darwin which, to his father's mind, disqualified him for medical practice, for in 1825, at sixteen, he sent him to join his elder brother Erasmus at Edinburgh University, as a medical student. But the result of two years' stay was rather to bring out his natural history tastes, especially in the direction of insect collecting; and he made two interesting discoveries about embryos of marine animals. He decidedly objected to medicine, so his father suggested his entering the Church, to which after a little demur he agreed, and accordingly went to Christ's College, Cambridge, in January, 1828. Here, again, he says that, as far as the academical studies were concerned, his time was wasted, as neither mathematics nor classics interested him. It is humiliating to think how little his educators could do for Darwin; but circumstance was soon to do for him what the skill of man could not, showing that in the order of this world there is an element which can far surpass the devices of human educators. He continued to collect insects, and learned a little botany from Professor Henslow, the Cambridge man who most influenced him. His friendship and stimulating conversation did more to rouse the young man's soul to enthusiasm for science than anything else. During his last year at Cambridge, he read with profound interest Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," that charming book of travel, and Sir John Herschel's "Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy." These two books, he says, "stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of the Natural Science." By answering well in Paley and Euclid, the only Cambridge subjects he worked heartily at, he managed to come out tenth in the pass or 'poll" examination for the B.A. degree in January. After this Henslow persuaded him to study geology, and in the summer he went on a geological excursion in Wales with Professor Sedgwick, on returning from which he found a letter from Henslow inviting him to go with Captain Fitz Roy in H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist without pay, during a voyage round the world. After due deliberation this offer was accepted, and to the voyage thus undertaken we owe the famous "Journal." "The voyage of the Beagle," says Darwin, "has been by far the most important event of my life, and has determined my whole career." He always felt that he owed to it the first real training of his mind. He was led to attend closely to various branches of natural history and geology, and the isolation of the voyage drove him to inward reflection. Energetic industry and concentrated attention to whatever he was engaged in, these were the habits he then acquired and ever afterwards displayed. They availed him unspeakably, when in after life his effective working time was limited by constant and painful ill-health to a very few hours a day. During the voyage, as is abundantly shown by the "Journal," everything about which he thought or read was made to bear directly upon what he had seen or was likely to see. He thus unconsciously came to feel that the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of the skilful sportsman. The voyage of the Beagle, lasting from the 27th December, 1831, to the 2nd October, 1836, enabled Darwin to visit many parts of South America and many Oceanic islands, and it was from these two sources mainly that he derived new facts in geology and natural history, which furnished the topics for his " Journal,' "The Zoology of the Beagle," "The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs," and his " Geological Observations on Volcanic Islands, and on South America," which he published in the few years after he returned home. Already, at the outset of the voyage, during the visit to St. Jago, in the Cape de Verde Archipelago, he conceived the idea of writing a book on the geology of the countries visited, and the fossil bones of huge extinct quadrupeds, which he found in South America, confirmed the resolution. Darwin had supplied himself before leaving England with the first volume of "Lyell's Principles of Geology," then lately issued; and to the reading of this book, more than any other, he ascribed not merely his own geological progress, but much of his general scientific training. A martyr to sea-sickness and nausea from a very early period of the voyage, the young naturalist continued to work indefatigably. Starting with but a smattering of science, he returned a practised naturalist, and a notable geologist. He was welcomed by the leaders of science, and was soon made secretary of the Geological Society, which office he held for three years. For some years his time was mainly occupied with writing the works mentioned above, together with numerous original papers, in some of which he established the recent elevation of the coast of Chili, and put forward the theory of the formation of coral reefs, which for the first time satisfactorily accounted for the phenomena. His "Journal," when published in 1839, with Fitz Roy's Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle," met with high appreciation from the first. The Quarterly Review found in it "ample materials for deep thinking, the vivid description that fills the mind's eye with brighter pictures than painter can present, and the charm arising from the freshness of heart which is thrown over these virgin pages of a strong intellectual man, and an acute and deep observer." But the pages speak for themselves, and we must pass on to describe the origin of Darwin's main life-work. Many facts which he observed in his voyage set the young naturalist meditating on their cause. The remarkable absence of trees in southern South America, the adaptation of animals and plants to live in and near salt lakes, the great number of huge extinct species of quadrupeds nearly allied to smaller species now occupying the same areas, the peculiarities in breeds of cattle, the distance to which small animals like beetles, butterflies, spiders, etc., could be carried by strong winds, the numerous distinct species of closely related animals found in the different islands of the Galapagos Archipelago; all these combined to set him thinking about the greatest problems of animate creation, how the coming in of new species and the going out of old could be accounted for. Lyell had introduced the idea that past geological changes were to be explained by studying causes now in operation, but it was still believed that the species of animals and plants were fixed, and could only vary within slight limits. This led to innumerable disputes between naturalists, as to what were the limits of different species, how many species of wild bramble or rose there were, for instance. In some cases many animals were nearly alike, but never bred together, in others, wide differences existed between the nearest allies. All this appeared inexplicable and without any reason, and orthodox naturalists referred everything they could not explain to "the Will of the Creator," a method which led to no intelligent comprehension of the subject. Darwin began to think that species must have been gradually modified, a view which Lamarck and his own grandfather had held before him. Many persons imagine that Darwin's great discovery was that species became changed in time, but that supposition had been put forward long before. His great work was to discover a reasonable mode by which such changes could be supposed to come about, supporting it by a multitude of skilfully arranged facts. The example of Lyell in geology led Darwin to see that the best chance in such a study lay in collecting all facts relating in any way to the present condition of animals and plants as to variation of characters, either in domestication or in a state of nature. His first note-book on the subject was opened in July 1837, and as he says, he “worked on the Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading.' His industry was incessant; multitudes of books of all kinds were read and abstracted, including whole series of the journals and transactions of learned societies. He soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. Breeders of pigeons and cattle, and horticulturists had long studied how to produce certain breeds, or to intensify certain characters which they valued; and their ends were gained by selecting and matching the most suitable parents and excluding all others, by giving particular food, etc. Nature gave successive variations; man added them up in directions useful to him. Thus in many cases breeds were produced differing in colour, size, and other points, more widely than distinct species in a state of nature. The great difficulty was to understand how any such principle could work in nature. Was there any self-acting system of breeding there? and could it produce the nearly-allied species which appeared in adjoining areas in South America, or the differences between the creatures of the Galapagos and the mainland, or between the recently extinct animals of South America and those now existing? The answer was due, in Darwin's mind, to the reading of Malthus's "Essay on Population," the work of a clergyman, published in 1798, which showed vividly the inevitable and ever-working tendency of animal life to increase beyond the means of subsistence, but also dwelt on the checks which come into play when the population increases too rapidly; these checks in the case of mankind consisting chiefly of war, pestilence, and famine. Naturalists had this work open to them long before; learned criticism had condemned it as injurious, because it threw doubt on the duty of increasing and multiplying without regard to means of subsistence; but no one had arisen capable of applying the principle in its full extent. Several writers, notably Dr. W. C. Wells, in 1813 (the author of two famous essays on Dew and Single Vision), had perceived the effects which might arise from natural selection in the case of man. Wells said that all animals tend to vary in some degree; and that what agriculturists do with animals by artificial selection, seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by nature |