The Red Notebook

An unexpected Helix aspersa last Thursday

It isn’t every Thursday morning that one makes a paradigm-destroying observation while rushing, umbrella-in-hand, to one’s car. But that is exactly what happened to me last Thursday. It was pouring with rain, I was running six minutes late for work, I was wet and cross about it, when suddenly, there it was, as bold as brass and as bright wet as day, in front of my very eyes: a common (but, until that point, not at all garden) snail, Helix aspersa, sliming its way across my driveway.

You have no idea how ridiculously happy this made me feel. It is six years this month since I moved to my home in the Yorkshire Pennines, and, in all that time (with one very minor exception), I have seen (if you’ll forgive the inappropriate cliché) neither hide nor hair of a snail. And, believe me, I’ve looked.

I first wrote about the lack of snails in my garden in 2002, in an essay entitled …So Let’s All Be Scientists! It was my contribution to Darwin Day Collection One: The Single Best Idea Ever [ISBN: 0972384405, Amazon.com], a collection of articles, reviews and cartoons in celebration of Darwin and science. In the essay, I suggested a number of hypotheses—some of them more serious than others—why there were no snails in my garden.

Until 06:16 last Thursday, the acidic soil hypothesis (i.e. the acidity of the soil preventing snails from forming shells) was my favourite explanation for the dearth of snails, but that has had to go by the wayside. I am now beginning to favour the out-competed-by-slugs hypothesis. For the first four years that I lived in this house, the garden was literally plagued by slugs: thousands and thousands of slugs. But, for the last two years, the number of slugs has dropped considerably. I’m not sure why this should be—a combination of an unusually dry summer last year, and more dilligent weeding by yours truly is my best guess—but maybe the marked drop in slugs has let the snails get a (literally) single foot in the door. A Darwinian mollusc war in my own garden: who’d have thought it?

I will continue to monitor the situation with renewed interest.

One-hundred and forty-nine years ago today, if his own account of events is to be believed (which has been questioned by some), Charles Darwin received the biggest bombshell of his scientific career. Having delayed publishing his theory of evolution by means of natural selection for many years, he received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, who was in Ternate on the Malayan Archipelago (modern day Indonesia), indicating that he was about to be scooped: in bed with a tropical fever, Wallace had independently come up with the theory of Natural Selection.

Wallace’s letter no longer survives (which is wonderful for conspiracy theorists), but we do still have the letter Darwin immediately wrote to his friend and confidante, Charles Lyell:

My dear Lyell

Some year or so ago, you recommended me to read a paper by Wallace in the Annals, which had interested you & as I was writing to him, I knew this would please him much, so I told him. He has to day sent me the enclosed & asked me to forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true with a vengeance that I sh^d be forestalled. You said this when I explained to you here very briefly my views of “Natural Selection” depending on the Struggle for existence.— I never saw a more striking coincidence. if Wallace had my M.S.

It pains me to say it, but the UK government’s decision to withdraw its nomination of Downe as a World Heritage Site was probably its most sensible option. At least it can now renominate Downe in two year’s time—which would coincide nicely with Darwin’s bicentennial.

But, like the government, I am completely stumped as to why Unesco might think for one second that Darwin’s former home and its environs might not be a suitable location to celebrate achievements in science. Indeed, I can think of few other places that fit the bill so admirably. Where else in the world (apart from the Galápagos Islands, which already have World Heritage Site status) can you visit a living landscape that inspired the natural world’s greatest genius?

Charles Darwin’s greenhouse-cum-laboratory at Down House

I was genuinely apprehensive about visiting Down House. I live eight miles from Haworth in West Yorkshire, home of the Brontës. I have only visited their famous parsonage once, and came away with the impression that, had I known or cared the first thing about the Brontës, I would have been dreadfully disappointed. There’s nothing to see, basically: it’s just an empty building with a few insignificant Brontë mementoes. I feared Down House would be the same.

But my fears were unfounded. Visiting Down House was one of the most moving and—dare I say it?—spiritual experiences of my life. It’s almost as if Darwin has just popped out for a stroll around the Sandwalk. Indeed, the Sandwalk—Darwin’s thinking path—alone should be enough to justify Downe World Heritage Site status.

Let’s hope Unesco sees sense in 2009.

See also: My Down House photos