The Red Notebook

One day back in 1831, a young English gentleman took up his pen and wrote his name and new address in the front of his German New Testament. Call me biased, but it must surely rank as the most awesome book inscription ever:

Inscription in Charles Darwin’s German New Testament
© The Charles Darwin Trust and reproduced with their kind permission

The young Charles Darwin had no way of knowing that he was about to embark on a journey which would lead to a paradigm-shifting scientific revolution, and hammer the final nail in the coffin of the conflicting creation myths described in the first couple of chapters of Genesis.

But why on Earth would a young, English naturalist want to take a German New Testament with him on a voyage of discovery? Apparently, it was to help him brush up on his German during the long months at sea. His intentions were good, but I suspect he didn’t do much brushing up: many years after the voyage, Charles Darwin was still having to have German texts translated for him.

Darwin’s German New Testament still exists, and is in the possession of the Charles Darwin Trust, which has kindly given those awfully nice chaps at the Beagle Project permission to make use of the above image—and they have very generously let me have this nice little scoop. Thanks, chaps!

Now, go over there and give them a whole pile of your money so that one day soon, some other young scientist will be able to inscribe one of their books with the address H.M.S. Beagle.

One-hundred and fifty- seventy-seven years ago today, on 24th August, 1831, the 22-year-old Charles Darwin received news that Captain Fitzroy was looking for a naturalist and companion for his forthcoming voyage to survey the southern extremity of America.

For more on this subject, see my post from two years ago entitled Henslow’s letter.

Darwin later described the Voyage of the Beagle as ‘by far the most important event in my life’. It’s wonderful to think that, some day in the not-too-distant future, young scientists will once again set sail on a new Beagle.

Postscript: Oops!

See also: The Darwinian Revolution

A dapper Darwin-groupie-cum-supermodel this evening.

As luck would have it, the Beagle Project merchandise I ordered from their lovely shop arrived today, on the very same day that they asked for photos of hunky supermodels sporting their stuff to show in their new Flickr Group. Happy to oblige, chaps.

When the postman who delivered the merchandise found the house empty, he thoughtfully left the cardboard box containing the goodies on the doorstep—during a thunderstorm. It was a mushy pulp by the time I got home. A mushy pulp with a frog sitting on top of it. I kid you not.

I call that a good omen.

More photos »

A tall ship on the River Mersey this morning

The ships about to participate in the Tall Ships’ Races convened in Liverpool this weekend. This lunchtime, I managed to pop out of the office for half an hour to have a butcher’s. The place was heaving.

There is an awful lot of interest in sailing ships. It seems to me that any enterprising company worth its salt (no pun intended) could do far worse than sponsor a tall ship. An interesting marketing opportunity. I mean, it’s not as if they’re ten-a-penny, is 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!

All she does is sit in front of the telly all day, smelling of wee. Worried about the kids’ college fees? Tell them to take a gap-year (they’ll learn far more that way). Got one more kidney than you actually need? Why not auction it on eBay? No spare change? Have you checked down the back of the sofa?

Come on, chaps, the Beagle Project needs your money. What else are you going to spend it on? Food?

Note to any young children reading this: Make sure you pester your parents to give lots of money to The Beagle Project. If they say no, it means they don’t love you, and are probably planning to give you away to an orphanage.

BBC: Royals ‘cost the taxpayer £40m’

Now I’m no accountant, but it seems to me that we Brits could kill two hen harriers with one stone if we were to get rid of this:

A superfluous royal

… and use a small fraction of the money we save to buy one of these:

An HMS Beagle

Q.E.D.

On 21st February, 1854, Charles Darwin wrote to his old HMS Beagle midshipman shipmate, Philip Gidley King, who was now living in Australia:

My dear King

I can hardly tell you how pleased I was, about a week ago, to receive your letter dated the 26^th. of October. I lead a rather solitary life, & in my walks very often think over old days in the Beagle, & no days rise pleasanter before me, than sitting with you on the Booms, running before the trade wind across the Atlantic.

Reminiscing two decades after the event about sitting with a friend high above the deck of a tall ship with a trade wind in your hair. What better reason could there possibly be for building a new Beagle?

The Beagle Project‘s Karen ‘Nunatak’ James and Peter ‘I Need a Nickname’ McGrath have been interviewed on the Minnesota Atheists Talk radio show. MP3 file here.

One for the car tomorrow, I think.

The Beagle Project‘s Peter McGrath, FCD, has a great post about visiting the Woolwich Dockyard where HMS Beagle was built. He was accompanied by a couple of other Beagle groupies. Photos and a radio programme are to follow.

I am consumed with jealousy yet again.

Postscript: Peter’s photos are now online.

[For any non-Brits out there, the title of this post is a reference to a poem by William Blake, which was turned into a rather magnificent yet jingoistic hymn.]

I’ve been a bit busy lately, so I might have missed the major announcement… The Beagle Project‘s very own Nunatak, FCD, now has her very own blog: Data Not Shown. And, if the first few posts are anything to go by, it’s going to be one well worth following.

Subscribed.

BBC: Sneak peek at Darwin’s crab haul

A rarely-seen collection of crabs from Charles Darwin’s voyage aboard HMS Beagle has been given a new lease of life on the web.

The University of Oxford has released images of specimens held in its museum collections that have been digitised for an online Darwin database.

The data is available on the Oxford University Museum of Natural History Zoology Darwin database. Not a particularly user-friendly search facility, I must say (hint: try entering ‘crab’ in the ‘diary entry’ field). Could definitely do with a top-down browse facility!

Another collection for those wonderful Beagle Project chaps to emulate, no doubt.

Postscript: More info here.

You should be over at the Beagle Project blog, reading the latest great post from Nunatak.

Congratulations to Peter and Nun of the Beagle Project for a great pair of interviews on Radio 4 this afternoon.

Bloody hell! Peter’s a Manc! And I was just starting to like the man!

P.S. Writing from my parents’ house on a crappy, old PC prior to going out to celebrate Darwin Day in liquid form with my FOCD co-founder, Fitz. If you never hear from us again, it was nice knowing you.

The father of the man,
Charles Darwin in 1816, age 7

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

William Wordsworth

One-hundred and ninety-nine years ago today, Charles Darwin was born at his parents’ home, The Mount, Shrewsbury. Today, no doubt, his familiar, elderly, bearded face will grace many a news site and weblog. As a rapidly aging, beard-wielding Darwin groupie, I thoroughly approve.

But birthdays, as the name implies, are celebrations of people’s births. Several decades were to pass between Darwin’s birth and the sprouting of his iconic beard. In the intervening time, the young Darwin went to school, collected rocks, dabbled with chemistry, went to university, learned taxidermy, combed the sea-shore, collected beetles, ate a dead owl, took up geology, made friends, did an awful lot of reading, and embarked on the most important voyage in the history of science. All of which—with the possible exception of the owl—would ultimately contribute in one way or another to the development of his theory of evolution by means of Natural Selection.

Darwin never lost his child-like curiosity with the natural world. Indeed, his childhood years were extremely important to his personal development. So, on this day of celebration, why not remember the young Darwin? And, if you get a chance, spare a few moments to kindle the imagination of one or more children with some interesting natural curiosity.

Oh, and even if you don’t get a chance to inspire some children personally, why not pop over to the Beagle Project website and make a donation so that they will one day be able to inspire whole shiploads of future scientists.

On Darwin Day, why not sew a few good seeds?

Spotted on my lunchtime walk today:

They don’t build them like that any more.

Well… not yet.

The Beagle Project Blog: Detecting natural selection: a pika’s tale

Great stuff!

The world and his mother seems to have linked to the Beagle Project in the last 24 hours, so why don’t I?

Go there! Read the blog! Buy stuff [Europe|elsewhere]! Help them build that ship!