Steven Shapin writes that Darwin’s uncontrollable retching and farting seriously limited his public life (LRB, 30 June).

Some years ago, to my delight, I worked out that the great man’s full name, Charles Robert Darwin, is an anagram of ‘rectal winds abhorrer’.

Unfortunately for my anagram, the meanings of words, like species, can evolve. On the rare occasions that Darwin mentioned his gaseous problems to friends, he always used the word ‘flatulence’. Nowadays, we think of flatulence as being synonymous with farting, but, in Darwin’s day, it simply meant (as it technically still does) an accumulation of gases in the alimentary canal.

While I’m sure that Darwin, like the rest of us, must have vented his excess gas one way or the other, there is no reason to believe that his farts were uncontrollable.

–
Richard Carter
The Friends of Charles Darwin

(As a postscript, I should perhaps add that, although Darwin’s nickname at school was Gas, this had nothing to do with his alimentary system, and everything to do with his passion for manufacturing gases in his amateur chemical laboratory at home.)

(As a second postscript, I should add that the LRB published the above letter in their 28-Jul-2011 edition.)

Postscript: More on the Times website

Sir,

I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your letter in which you announce to me that the Yorkshire Philosophical Society has done me the honour of electing me one of the Honorary Members of the Socety [sic]; and for this honour I return my most sincere acknowledgements.

I beg to remain,

Sir,

Your Obedient and Obliged Servant,

Charles Darwin

Nice one, Yorkshire! I am suddenly extremely proud of my adoptive county.

See also: Darwin in Ilkley

It’s little insights like these which make the Darwin Correspondence Project by far the best way we have of getting inside the great man’s head. If I had my way, they would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I was very glad of your P.S. on the state of your country; one values a private note far more than a dozen public letters. After carefully reading Olmstead’s last Book I never doubted the North would conquer the South. But then what is to follow? From Olmstead & Russell’s letters in Times, I cannot believe that the South would ever have fellow-feeling enough with the North to allow of government in common. Could the North endure a Southern President? The whole affair is a great misfortune in the progress of the World; but I sh^d not regret it so much, if I could persuade myself that Slavery would be annihilated. But your president does not even mention the word in his Address.— I sometimes wish the contest to grow so desperate that the north would be led to declare freedom as a diversion against the Enemy. In 50 or 100 years your posterity would bless the act.— But Heaven knows why I trouble you with my speculations; I ought to stick to Orchids.

The president in question was Darwin’s twin, Abraham Lincoln; his address was before a special session of the United States Congress on 4 July 1861.

The North, it turned out, could indeed endure a Southern president. How much more surprised (and, I presume, pleased) would Darwin have been to learn that the South would one day accept a black president?

Simon,

In your piece Darwin’s theory turned bosses into dinosaurs in today’s Observer, you re-quote the oft-quoted Darwin quote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”

I wonder if you have an original source for this quote. I have never been able to track one down. A search for the phrase ‘responsive to change’ yields zero hits on both the Complete Works of Darwin and Darwin Correspondence Project websites.

I suspect Darwin never said any such thing.

Regards,

Richard Carter, FCD
The Friends of Charles Darwin
http://friendsofdarwin.com

In fact, I’m pretty damn sure Darwin never said any such thing—even though the quote appears all over the internet (in particular, in stories about economics). If anyone out there knows the original source for the quote, please cite it in the comments.

Postscript: The marvels of RSS and FriendFeed! Minutes after I ask for an original source for the quotation, I receive several answers in the comments. Then Michael Barton points me to this amusing photo:

Evolution misquote at California Academy of Sciences cc Colin Purrington
“It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” Etched into the floor and attributed to Charles Darwin. Note to self: check quote attribution before etching big quote onto expensive stone floor. [Thanks to Michael Barton's point to www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/09/darwin.myths.]

Can you give me any thoroughily well authenticated facts on ever so little variations in nests; I do not mean such cases as the Water owzel habitually having a doomed or open nest—or difference of Sparrow’s nest in tree & in hole; but rather any slight difference in degree of perfection of nest of same species in different districts or of any individuals of same species.—

At this stage, Darwin was presumably researching animal instincts. He briefly discussed location-dependent variation in birds’ nests in chapter 7 of On the Origin of Species:

As some degree of variation in instincts under a state of nature, and the inheritance of such variations, are indispensable for the action of natural selection, as many instances as possible ought to have been here given; but want of space prevents me. I can only assert, that instincts certainly do vary for instance, the migratory instinct, both in extent and direction, and in its total loss. So it is with the nests of birds, which vary partly in dependence on the situations chosen, and on the nature and temperature of the country inhabited, but often from causes wholly unknown to us: Audubon has given several remarkable cases of differences in nests of the same species in the northern and southern United States.

The water ousel mentioned and misspelt by Darwin is one of my favourite birds, mentioned previously in the Red Notebook, the dipper [Cinclus cinclus].

Charles Darwin to J.D. Hooker (11-Jan-1844):

Besides a general interest about the Southern lands, I have been now ever since my return [from the Beagle voyage] engaged in a very presumptuous work & which I know no one individual who w^d not say a very foolish one.— I was so struck with distribution of Galapagos organisms &c &c & with the character of the American fossil mammifers, &c &c that I determined to collect blindly every sort of fact, which c^d bear any way on what are species.— I have read heaps of agricultural & horticultural books, & have never ceased collecting facts— At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

Joseph Dalton Hooker was one of the first people Darwin confided in regarding his heretical evolutionary views. He chose his friends well. They had only been corresponding with each other for two months, but Hooker was to remain one of Darwin’s most staunch allies for the rest of Darwin’s life.

Mamma went up yesterday & brought down two such patterns, of the exact colour of mud, streaked with rancid oil, that we have all exclaimed against them; & I have agreed to take anything in preference & we have settled on a crimson flock-paper with golden stars, though unseen by me.—

Even the placid Darwin drew the line at streaky, brown wallpaper.

But then Darwin came home and married his cousin, having decided that a wife would be better than a dog, the hopeless romantic.

And that’s about it. Charles Darwin remained a happily married man for the rest of his days, casting never so much as a glance at any woman other than his beloved Emma.

Or so I thought…

Then, I came across the following in a letter Darwin wrote to his eldest son, William, and I began to see old Charlie in a new light:

Aunt Catherine comes here for fortnight next Monday.— Mammie & Lizzie are gone to lunch today with the Normans; as we declined a dinner invite, which the beautiful Miss Norman brought us.—

Charles, you old rogue! You’re old enough to be her father! Shame on you! But seriously, though, good on you, mate! I was starting to get a bit worried about you.

An editorial footnote to the letter explains: In a letter written shortly before this one, Emma Darwin told William: ‘… Papa admires Miss N[orman]. very much, which I do not she smiles too constantly & a smile is never a sweet one that is constant’.

Sour grapes, Emma?

See also: Books – The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 7: 1858–1859

Many people also got (and continue to get) it spectacularly wrong about Charles Darwin. In 1859, the President of the Linnean Society, Thomas Bell, regretted that, “The year which has passed … has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear”. This from the man who, in July of the unremarkable year in question (1858), had presided over the reading of Darwin and Wallace’s legendary (and revolutionary) joint paper, in which the theory of evolution by means of Natural Selection was finally unleashed on an unsuspecting (and largely unimpressed) world.

But perhaps my favourite minor figure from the annals of science who got it wrong was the well-meaning first reviewer of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Whitwell Elwin.

Elwin was a clergyman, and a close associate of Darwin’s publisher, John Murray, whom Murray consulted regarding most of his new publications. Murray sent a manuscript of Origin to Elwin for comment prior to publication. In a long letter to Murray, Elwin praised the style and breadth of Darwin’s valuable work, but claimed that Darwin’s lack of evidence “would do grievous injustice to his views”. Instead of rushing into print with the full volume at this time, said Elwin, why not take up Sir Charles Lyell’s earlier suggestion and write a shorter book about Darwin’s observations on pigeons? He reasoned:

This appears to me to be an admirable suggestion. Even if the larger work were ready it would be the best mode of preparing the way for it. Every body is interested in pigeons. The book would be reviewed in every journal in the kingdom & would soon be on every table. The public at large can better understand a question when it is narrowed to a single case of this kind than when the whole varied kingdom of nature is brought under discussion at the outset.

To be fair to Elwin, his advice was well-intentioned and carefully thought out. But it is amusing to think that, had it been followed, Darwin might have been reduced to writing a popular book about pigeons.

But, fortunately for science, Darwin was having none of that. Three days later, having been forwarded Elwin’s comments, he wrote to Murray, politely but firmly:

It is my deliberate conviction that both Lyells & M^r Elwyns suggestions, (which differ to a certain extent) are impracticable. I have done my best. Others might, I have no doubt, done the job better, if they had my materials; but that is no help.— Nothing on earth can have been kinder than both M^r Elwyn & Sir C. Lyell have been.—

The subject was not discussed again, and On the Origin of Species went to print a few months later.

–
See also: How about a nice little book on pigeons?

But I should like to suggest an alternative scientific field which would be of extreme interest to the resurrected Darwin. I don’t for one second claim that it’s a more appropriate topic than genetics to explain to the great man, but it’s one that would fascinate him: I would tell Mr Darwin about plate tectonics.

Darwin first made his name in the world of science as a geologist. Having received some practical experience geologising with Adam Sedgwick in North Wales shortly before he set off on HMS Beagle, he picked up much of the latest revolutionary geological thinking by devouring Charles Lyell’s recently published Principles of Geology during the voyage. Darwin later wrote that Lyell’s book ‘altered the whole tone of one’s mind & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes’.

Darwin put his new Lyellian eyes to good use. By the time he returned to Blighty in 1836, he had gathered considerable evidence to show that much of South America is gradually rising, and had come up with what proved to be the correct explanation for the formation of coral reefs. We now know that the underlying mechanism behind both of these phenomena is plate tectonics. Darwin would have been intrigued to hear the modern take on his geological theories.

But it wouldn’t just be Darwin the geologist who would be want to learn about plate tectonics; Darwin the naturalist would be all ears too. Darwin and his friends (most notably Hooker) spent much time thinking about how species came to be distributed in the way that they are. They hypothesised former land-bridges, and Darwin brilliantly suggested how changes in global temperatures associated with the former glacial period (he did not know that there had been more than one ice age) would have allowed temperate species to relocate to tropical areas before being forced into the mountains as warmer temperatures returned. The following extract from a letter Hooker send to Darwin in 1858 is typical of their correspondence on the subject:

[I] want you to [go into] print that I may take up your refrigeration doctrine, to which I think I should have come clumsily at last by myself as the only way of accounting for the spread of European species to Australia.

It is curious—that so many more Europ. sp. should be in Australia than in Fuegia & S. Chili! Especially considering the enormous distance of Europe to Australia & no continuous mountains.

Put end of string on globe on England & other end on V[an] D[ieman's] L[and (i.e. Tasmania)] & it will run through the most continuous masses of Land on globe—it is the greatest stretch of all but [sic, presumably he meant by] dry land that you can find, & I can connect the Botany the whole way by mountains of 1. Borneo; 2, Java & Ceylon & Penins Ind. 3 Khasia; 4 Himal 5 Caucasus, 6 Alps. 7 Scandinavia.— I can thus connect Botanically England with VDL. better than I could Canada with Fuegia!

Had they known about plate tectonics, Darwin and Hooker might have understood better why the flora of Canada and Fuegia (which are nowadays connected by one huge, continuous landmass) are so different. We now know that North and South America were not always joined at the hip, and once formed separate continents with their own distinct species, divided by a wide ocean.

Charles Darwin would have had great fun working out how the modern theory of plate tectonics might be applied to his own theory of evolution. Perhaps he might have realised how it can be used to explain the mysterious Wallace Line which separates the Asian and Australasian zoogeographical regions. No doubt, he would have got many things wrong in his theorising, but knowledge of plate tectonics would have opened up a whole new line of enquiry for Darwin’s species work. It would have been yet more grist to his cerebral mill.

See also: Books – Charles Darwin, Geologist

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?

Charles Darwin to J.D. Hooker (11-Jan-1844):

Besides a general interest about the Southern lands, I have been now ever since my return [from the Beagle voyage] engaged in a very presumptuous work & which I know no one individual who w^d not say a very foolish one.— I was so struck with distribution of Galapagos organisms &c &c & with the character of the American fossil mammifers, &c &c that I determined to collect blindly every sort of fact, which c^d bear any way on what are species.— I have read heaps of agricultural & horticultural books, & have never ceased collecting facts— At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

Hooker was one of the first people Darwin confided in regarding his heretical evolutionary views. He chose his friends well. They had only been corresponding with each other for two months, but Hooker was to remain one of Darwin’s most staunch allies for the rest of Darwin’s life.

Darwin’s ugly house

On this date in 1842, Charles Darwin turned his back on the hustle and bustle of London and moved into his new home, Down House, in the village of Down (later Downe) in Kent. His wife Emma had moved in three days earlier.

In a letter to his sister, Emily written a few months earlier, Darwin decribed at length the attractions of the village, then continued:

The house stands very badly close to a tiny lane & near another man’s field— Our field is 15

… I write all this as if it was settled but it is not more than it was.—excepting that from Cap. FitzRoy wishing me so much to go, & from his kindness I feel a predestination I shall start.— I spent a very pleasant evening with him yesterday: he must be more than 23 old. he is of a slight figure, & a dark but handsome edition of M^r. Kynaston.—& according to my notions preeminently good manners: He is all for Economy excepting on one point, viz fire arms he recommends me strongly to get a case of pistols like his which cost 60£!!, & never to go on shore anywhere without loaded ones.— & he is doubting about a rifle.— he says I cannot appreciate the luxury of fresh meat here.— Of course I shall buy nothing till every thing is settled: but I work all day long at my lists, putting in & striking out articles.— This is the first really cheerful day I have spent since I received the letter, & it all is owing to the sort of involuntary confidence I place in my beau ideal of a Captain.—

In his autobiography written towards the end of his life, Darwin added:

Afterwards, on becoming very intimate with Fitz-Roy, I heard that I had run a very narrow risk of being rejected, on account of the shape of my nose! He was an ardent disciple of Lavater, and was convinced that he could judge of a man’s character by the outline of his features; and he doubted whether any one with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage. But I think he was afterwards well satisfied that my nose had spoken falsely.

Fitzroy was a keen amateur physiognomist.