The Red Notebook

That might well be an excavated femur, Prof. Owen, but you stand here accused of skull-duggery.

I received a very interesting query from a student earlier this week: “I was wondering if you had a source that verifies that Owen wrote the anonymous Edinburgh Review article”.

I assumed that a quick flick through the references in a couple of my many Darwin books would soon resolve that one, but not so: that Richard Owen was the author of the scathing review of On the Origin of Species was simply stated as fact in every book I checked. Charles Darwin was certainly in no doubt whatsoever that Owen was behind the review and wrote Owen’s name on the front of his personal copy. But was there a quotable source for this attribution, rather than informed supposition?

I eventually managed to track one down. In a letter to Darwin shortly after the event, Joseph Dalton Hooker wrote:

Bell told me yesterday that Owen avows the Review, I can hardly believe it.

Thomas Bell was president of the Linnean Society. His word reported via Hooker is good enough for me. Guilty as charged, Prof. Owen.

If anyone knows of a document in which Owen admits to being the author of the review first-hand, I’d be interested to hear about it.

A minuscule Charles Darwin yesterday.

Who is that minuscule man standing at the pointy end of that minuscule HMS Beagle? Why, it is none other than a minuscule Charles Robert Darwin!

But lo! What is that thing that the minuscule Darwin is holding in his minuscule left hand? Could it be? Surely not! Yes, it is! It is nothing less than a minuscule Red Notebook!

The minuscule Darwin’s red notebook was spotted by a [B]eagle-eyed Karen ‘Nunatak’ James and photographed by her Beagle Project sidekick Peter ‘I don’t have a nickname’ ‘Merk’ McGrath. No doubt we will be hearing more about the minuscule Beagle on their blog soon.

Thanks, chaps. You made my day!