The discovery of Neptune is one of those neat stories often used to illustrate the predictive capabilities of science. Englishman John Couch Adams and Frenchman Urbain Jean-Joseph Le Verrier independently calculated the orbit of the inferred new planet, based on known irregularities in the orbit of Uranus. And, sure enough, when astronomers pointed their telescopes where Adams and Le Verrier said, there shone Neptune! Interestingly, though, these astronomers were probably not the first to observe Neptune: Galileo, Lalande and Herschel are each thought to have seen the it earlier, but none of them seems to have realised that they were looking at a new planet.

Another frequently told story of a scientific prediction proving correct comes courtesy of Charles Darwin. (You must have known I’d be getting to him eventually.) In his snappily titled book On the Various Contrivances by which British And Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing, Darwin famously predicted the existence of a moth with an extremely long proboscis, which would be the pollinator of a strange Madagascan orchid with an extremely long nectary, writing:

I fear that the reader will be wearied, but I must say a few words on the Angræcum sesquipedale, of which the large six-rayed flowers, like stars formed of snow-white wax, have excited the admiration of travellers in Madagascar. A whip-like green nectary of astonishing length hangs down beneath the labellum. […]

I could not for some time understand how the pollinia of this Orchid were removed, or how it could be fertilised. I passed bristles and needles down the open entrance into the nectary and through the cleft in the rostellum with no result. It then occurred to me that, from the length of the nectary, the flower must be visited by large moths, with a proboscis thick at the base; and that to drain the last drop of nectar even the largest moth would have to force its proboscis as far down as possible.

Xanthopan morganii praedicta
(Image: cc kqedquest on Flickr)

Darwin’s prediction was seen as a bold one by at least one of his correspondents. In 1862, just 16 years after the discovery of Neptune, Edward Cresy Jr went so far as to compare Darwin’s prediction with that of Adams and Le Verrier, writing to Darwin:

I think your anticipation by analogy of a Madagascar moth with a probiscis ten inches long equals Adam’s & Leverrier— What a triumph it will be to find him—

Unlike Adams and Le Verrier, Darwin did not live to see his prediction confirmed. It was not until 1903 that a new sub-species of the African hawk moth was discovered in Madagascar. As Darwin had predicted, the moth feeds from the nectaries of Angraecum sesquipedale with its extremely long proboscis. The new sub-species was given the very appropriate scientific name Xanthopan morganii praedicta in recognition of yet another triumphant prediction for science.

Postscript [02-Dec-2011]: …although, apparently (see comments), Xanthopan morganii praedicta was named in honour of Alfred Russel Wallace’s similar prediction, not Darwin’s.

The films describe two fictitious conversations between Charles Darwin and the real-life London Soho barber William Willis, with whom Darwin really did converse on the subject of dog-breeding. Although the conversations are fictitious, the events described in them are pretty accurate.

The conversations, as you will see, take place immediately before two key events in Darwin’s life:

Charles Darwin: A Genius in the Heart of London:

Part 1: Saved by a Soho Barber

 
Part 2: A Final Journey to the Abbey

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.)

On 22nd May, 1826, His Majesty’s Ship Beagle set sail from Plymouth on a surveying voyage to South America.

Neither Darwin nor FitzRoy were on board. This was Beagle’s first voyage. Her more famous second voyage was to begin five years later.

But her first voyage was not without incident: hardship; scurvy; several deaths; the suicide of Beagle’s captain, Pringle Stokes; his temporary replacement by Lieutenant Skyring; his official replacement by the 23-year-old Robert FitzRoy, who joined the ship at Montevideo; surveying; the discovery and naming of the Beagle Channel; the abduction of four young Fuegian natives.

The first Beagle voyage was to establish Robert FitzRoy as an able and talented ship’s captain, making him the logical choice to fulfil the same role on what was to become her far more famous second voyage. The need to return the young Fuegians to their homeland was surely a factor in FitzRoy’s acceptance of the commission; Stokes’s suicide a key factor in FitzRoy’s decision to take a gentleman companion on the voyage.

In other words, were it not for the events of the first Beagle voyage, history might have been very different.

The exchange seems to have led to a Wilkins blog post, Darwin Day: Enough already, the main thrust of which was that continuing to talk about [Darwin] leads people to, possibly correctly, think that this is a cult of personality rather than something about the history and nature of science.

Wilkins might be surprised to hear that I agree with many of his sentiments. I feel particularly uncomfortable when people wheel Darwin into modern debates and start speaking on his behalf, quote-mining him in support of whatever particular point they want to make, as if having someone who has been dead for almost 129 years on your side counts for anything much.

But that’s not why I continue to bore the pants off people about Darwin.

Darwin means many things to many people. Which is why, when my mate Fitz and I set up the Friends of Charles Darwin all those years ago to campaign to see Darwin celebrated on a British bank note, we opted for a deliberately vague motto—an amusing pun concocted by Fitz—which any self-professed Darwin groupie could surely embrace: Charlie is my Darwin. And, if Charlie was your Darwin too, you were welcome to join us.

Yes, I am fascinated by modern biology, and I am delighted that so much of what Darwin wrote still holds true and is re-enforced every day by new discoveries in the natural world. But the world has moved on, and we now know far more about evolution than Darwin could ever have dreamt. Wilkins is right, the research programme began with Darwin; it didn’t finish with him. And nobody would have been more delighted about this than Darwin.

But modern biology isn’t why I continue to bore the pants off people about Darwin. Nor is philosophy. And it certainly isn’t Bible-bashing. In fact, Wilkins put it best in the opening sentence of his post:

I love studying about Darwin and his life and times.

Isn’t that good enough reason for studying Darwin and his life and times? And for boring the pants off people about him? Can’t we be interested in Darwin for his own sake, rather than for what he might tell us about the history and nature of science? Others have soccer or cars or Justin Bieber (no, me neither); but Charlie is my Darwin, and, if I’m boring that pants off you about him, well, that’s just what I do.

The fair way to view the argument of my book, I think, is to look at Natural Selection as a mere hypothesis (though rendered in some degree probable by the analogy of method of production of domestic races; & by what we know of the struggle for existence) & then to judge whether the mere hypothesis explains a large body of facts in Geographical Distribution, Geological Succession, & more especially in Classification, Homology, Embryology, Rudimentary Organs The hypothesis to me does seem to explain several independent large classes of facts; & this being so, I view the hypothesis as a theory having a high degree of probability of truth. All turns on whether the above classes of facts seem to you satisfactorily explained or not.

In other words, think of evolution by means of Natural Selection as an idea worthy of consideration, then actually consider the facts which can be explained by Darwin’s idea, and decide whether you find them compelling.

You can’t ask much more of a reader than that.

Unfortunately, in this case, Darwin’s correspondent, the naturalist and geologist Samuel Pickworth Woodward (1821–65), found it impossible to accept Darwin’s views.

In these days of the 140-character tweet and the ten-posts-per-day blog, it’s all too easy to get into a heated arguments with someone on the strength (or weakness) of a ill-considered online blurt. I’ve done it myself. Our modern means of communication encourage instant feedback, often to the detriment of thoughtful reflection.

Less so in Darwin’s day. This from William Whewell in January, 1860:

My dear M^r Darwin

I have to thank you for a copy of your book on the ‘Origin of Species’. You will easily believe that it has interested me very much, and probably you will not be surprized to be told that I cannot, yet at least, become a convert to your doctrines. But there is so much of thought and of fact in what you have written that it is not to be contradicted without careful selection of the ground and manner of the dissent, which I have not now time for. I must therefore content myself with thanking you for your kindness.

believe me | Yours very truly | W Whewell

William Whewell (1794–1866)

This seems to me the right way to go about things. Whewell—a mathematician, historian and philosopher of science, who was also an Anglican priest and theologian—disagrees fundamentally with Darwin’s revolutionary new theory, but is not prepared to dismiss it without more careful consideration.

I’m not sure how much careful consideration Whewell gave evolution by means of Natural Selection after his polite letter to Darwin. Not much, if their lack of subsequent correspondence is anything to go by. But at least Whewell had the decency to recognise that Darwin had provided a lot of food for thought: a position worthy of the gentleman who gave us the word scientist.

The age of the literary correspondence is dying, slowly but surely electrocuted by the superconductors of high modernity. This expiration was locked into a certainty about 20 years ago; and although William Trevor and VS Naipaul, say, may yet reward us, it already sounds fogeyish to reiterate that, no, we won’t be seeing, and we won’t be wanting to see, the selected faxes and emails, the selected texts and tweets of their successors.

Larkin touched upon the death of literary correspondence himself in early 1981, writing to his friend Judy Egerton, “We may be the last generation to write to each other.” This was in the days before ubiquitous email, but I’m with Amis: faxes, emails, texts and tweets can’t compare to a traditional letter.

I’m no poetry groupie, but I can’t resist a good collection of letters. Larkin’s previously published letters are riveting. His correspondence with Martin Amis’s father, Kingsley, in particular is a joy to read: humourous, warm, opinionated, and frequently filthy. Anyone only familiar with the two literary giants’ published works has no idea what they were really like.

As a self-confessed Darwin groupie who loves reading other people’s letters, the Correspondence of Charles Darwin is, quite simply, a must-possess, as far as I’m concerned. I own every volume published so far, and am slowly working my way through them.

A Darwin groupie’s bookshelf.

One thing is for certain, Charles Darwin wrote and received an awful lot of letters. And the wonderful people at the Darwin Correspondence Project have done a frankly magnificent job researching each letter, and annotating them with with copious footnotes. I genuinely believe they should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature when they eventually complete their mammoth task. I just hope I live long enough to see it! Forget the biographies. Forget the published works. If you really want to get to know Charles Darwin in person, you need to read his correspondence.

Last week, I began reading volume 8 of the Darwin correspondence, which covers the year 1860—the year following the publication of On the Origin of Species. So expect to see a few more Red Notebook posts about Darwin’s 1860 correspondence over the next few months.

So why shouldn’t I?

As a proud Brit, I am of the opinion—don’t try to gainsay me—that I live on the most beautiful island on this most wonderful of planets. The British countryside is second to none. Which is why I love walking in it so much. And, every time I repeat the same old walk, I delight in spotting something new to catch my interest.

So imagine my delight when I came across this lovely quote from the great man himself:

In England any person fond of natural history enjoys in his walks a great advantage, by always having something to attract his attention;

Correct as ever, Mr D.

The phrase is, as if you couldn’t have guessed, a Darwin quote. It is to be found in—or, more correctly, on the back of—the original Red Notebook. I will let Darwin scholar Sandra Herbert explain:

The Red Notebook is one of a series of notebooks kept by Charles Darwin during and immediately following his service as naturalist to the 1831-1836 surveying voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. It forms part of the collection of Darwin manuscripts at Down House in Kent, Darwin’s former home, and, since 1929, a museum in his honour. The notebook came to Down House by arrangement with the Darwin family following Sir George Buckston Browne’s purchase of the house for use as a museum. It is a well-made but otherwise ordinary pocket notebook, measuring 67/16″ × 315/16″ (164 mm × 99 mm), leather bound with a metal latch, which still works, and, as the name suggests, red in colour, although the original brilliance has faded. The leather cover is embossed with a border design on both sides. The front cover of the notebook bears the initials ‘R.N.’, written on a rectangular piece of white paper. On the back cover is pasted a similar piece of paper with the identical initials and the additional phrase ‘Range of Sharks’, referring to an entry within the notebook. There is also an ominous epigram written in larger letters across the back of the notebook: ‘Nothing For any Purpose’. All of these inscriptions are written in brown ink in Darwin’s handwriting.

Darwin clearly thought that his own Red Notebook did not contain anything useful. What better tribute could I pay the great man than ensuring that my own red notebook is equally unproductive?

Although Darwin undoubtedly did avoid writing about the thorny, old subject of religion, he did occasionally make passing comment on the subject, such as in this passage from The Voyage of the Beagle:

A strong desire is always felt to ascertain whether any human being has previously visited an unfrequented spot. A bit of wood with a nail in it, is picked up and studied as if it were covered with hieroglyphics. Possessed with this feeling, I was much interested by finding, on a wild part of the coast, a bed made of grass beneath a ledge of rock. Close by it there had been a fire, and the man had used an axe. The fire, bed, and situation showed the dexterity of an Indian; but he could scarcely have been an Indian, for the race is in this part extinct, owing to the Catholic desire of making at one blow Christians and Slaves.

In their book Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Desmond and Moore claim, with more than a little supporting evidence, that Darwin’s abhorrence of slavery heavily influenced his scientific thinking. It was certainly a subject very close to his heart—which perhaps goes some way to explaining his uncharacteristic dig at religion in the above passage.

At the start of autumn, I sometimes help my farmer friend to bring her free-range beef cattle down from the local moor where they have been grazing throughout the summer. In winter, I help her to move them between various fields to ensure that they have enough grass to eat. In spring, I help return them to the moor.

Such experiences have given me a deep contempt for cattle, which I no longer try to conceal. Semi-wild cows are unbelievably stupid and wilful creatures. No force on Earth can compel them to go where they have decided they don’t want to go—even when it is in their own best interest.

But I’ve never had to get a cow into a boat.

Fortunately, if I ever find myself in the position of needing to get a cow into a boat, I now know exactly how to do it thanks to Charles Darwin, who observed how it is done and recorded the technique for posterity in his useful animal-husbandry manual, The Voyage of the Beagle:

The road to Cucao was so very bad that we determined to embark in a periagua. The commandant, in the most authoritative manner, ordered six Indians to get ready to pull us over, without deigning to tell them whether they would be paid. The periagua is a strange rough boat, but the crew were still stranger: I doubt if six uglier little men ever got into a boat together. They pulled, however, very well and cheerfully. The stroke-oarsman gabbled Indian, and uttered strange cries, much after the fashion of a pig-driver driving his pigs. We started with a light breeze against us, but yet reached the Capella de Cucao before it was late. The country on each side of the lake was one unbroken forest. In the same periagua with us, a cow was embarked. To get so large an animal into a small boat appears at first a difficulty, but the Indians managed it in a minute. They brought the cow alongside the boat, which was heeled towards her; then placing two oars under her belly, with their ends resting on the gunwale, by the aid of these levers they fairly tumbled the poor beast heels over head into the bottom of the boat, and then lashed her down with ropes.

So now we know. Thanks, Charles.

Condor, Canyon del Colca, Peru (cc gudi&cris)

Darwin describes his condor experiment in The Voyage of the Beagle. He gets off to what would nowadays be thought of as a pretty bad start:

April 27th. … This day I shot a condor. It measured from tip to tip of the wings, eight and a half feet, and from beak to tail, four feet.

He then describes the range and habits of condors before getting on to his experiment on some live, captive condors:

Remembering the experiments of M. Audubon, on the little smelling powers of carrion-hawks, I tried […] the following experiment: the condors were tied, each by a rope, in a long row at the bottom of a wall; and having folded up a piece of meat in white paper, I walked backwards and forwards, carrying it in my hand at the distance of about three yards from them, but no notice whatever was taken. I then threw it on the ground, within one yard of an old male bird; he looked at it for a moment with attention, but then regarded it no more. With a stick I pushed it closer and closer, until at last he touched it with his beak; the paper was then instantly torn off with fury, and at the same moment, every bird in the long row began struggling and flapping its wings. Under the same circumstances, it would have been quite impossible to have deceived a dog.

…a classic blind test—although it seems strange to use the phrase when experimenting on the sense of smell.

Darwin goes on to observe:

The evidence in favour of and against the acute smelling powers of carrion-vultures is singularly balanced. Professor Owen has demonstrated that the olfactory nerves of the turkey-buzzard (Cathartes aura) are highly developed, and on the evening when Mr. Owen’s paper was read at the Zoological Society, it was mentioned by a gentleman that he had seen the carrion-hawks in the West Indies on two occasions collect on the roof of a house, when a corpse had become offensive from not having been buried, in this case, the intelligence could hardly have been acquired by sight. On the other hand, besides the experiments of Audubon and that one by myself, Mr. Bachman has tried in the United States many varied plans, showing that neither the turkey-buzzard (the species dissected by Professor Owen) nor the gallinazo find their food by smell. He covered portions of highly-offensive offal with a thin canvas cloth, and strewed pieces of meat on it: these the carrion-vultures ate up, and then remained quietly standing, with their beaks within the eighth of an inch of the putrid mass, without discovering it. A small rent was made in the canvas, and the offal was immediately discovered; the canvas was replaced by a fresh piece, and meat again put on it, and was again devoured by the vultures without their discovering the hidden mass on which they were trampling. These facts are attested by the signatures of six gentlemen, besides that of Mr. Bachman.

The degree to which certain birds use smell to detect food is still a controversial topic. Most birds seem to have a poor sense of smell, but others such as kiwis and certain sea birds do seem to make use of it while foraging/hunting for food. Although turkey vultures seem to have a good sense of smell, experiments have shown that it does not appear sufficiently acute to detect odours from high altitude.

167 years after Darwin performed his condor experiment, the controversy continues.

The only quadruped native to the island; is a large wolf- like fox (Canis antarcticus), which is common to both East and West Falkland. I have no doubt it is a peculiar species, and confined to this archipelago; because many sealers, Gauchos, and Indians, who have visited these islands, all maintain that no such animal is found in any part of South America.

Molina, from a similarity in habits, thought that this was the same with his “culpeu”; but I have seen both, and they are quite distinct. These wolves are well known from Byron’s account of their tameness and curiosity, which the sailors, who ran into the water to avoid them, mistook for fierceness. To this day their manners remain the same. They have been observed to enter a tent, and actually pull some meat from beneath the head of a sleeping seaman. The Gauchos also have frequently in the evening killed them, by holding out a piece of meat in one hand, and in the other a knife ready to stick them. As far as I am aware, there is no other instance in any part of the world, of so small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself. Their numbers have rapidly decreased; they are already banished from that half of the island which lies to the eastward of the neck of land between St. Salvador Bay and Berkeley Sound. Within a very few years after these islands shall have become regularly settled, in all probability this fox will be classed with the dodo, as an animal which has perished from the face of the earth.

How the Falklands fox (also known as the Falklands wolf or warrah) got to the Falkland Islands, which lie 480km from the South American mainland, is still something of a mystery. Recent genetic analyses show that the animal’s closest living relative is the maned wolf of South America. But these analyses also indicate that the two canids’ lineages diverged over 6 million years ago—and canids do not appear in the South American fossil record until 2.5 million years ago. From this we can infer that, if absolute genetic dating is to be trusted (concerning which, I personally entertain some doubts), the two lineages most likely evolved in North America. We should expect, therefore, to find more recent ancestors of the Falklands fox in the South American fossil record. One possible candidate for such an ancestor is Dusicyon avus from Patagonia, which went extinct 6,000 to 8,000 years ago.

It is believed that the ancestors of the Falklands fox must have crossed over to the islands during the last ice age (which ended 11,500 years ago), when the lower sea-level probably caused a land-bridge between the Falkland Islands and the South American mainland. Darwin’s view was that they might have crossed to the Falkland Islands on icebergs (see below). Another, very unlikely suggestion is that the fox is descended from domesticated foxes transported to the islands by the Yaghan people of Tierra del Fuego, who used culpeos as hunting dogs. But there is no archaeological evidence that any humans visited the Falkland Islands before the British first arrived there, and, as Darwin himself pointed out (see above) culpeos are quite distinct from Falkland foxes.

The Falkland fox “Canis antarcticus” from Mammalia, Part 2 No. 1 of The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle by George R. Waterhouse (Charles Darwin ed.)

En route home to Blighty aboard HMS Beagle in 1835, Darwin wrote up some Ornithological and Animal Notes from the voyage, in which he included some observations about the Falklands fox:

Out of the four specimens brought home in the Beagle, three will be seen to be darker coloured, they come from the East Is^d. The fourth is smaller & rusty coloured, & is from the West Is^d. — Mr Lowe, who has been acquainted with these Islands for twenty years, & who is an accurate observer of Nature, asserts that this difference between the Foxes of the two Is^ds is invariable & constant. He says he has long since observed it. — An accurate comparison of these specimens will be interesting. I have omitted to add that the difference was corroborated by the officers of the Adventure. —

So, perhaps the Falkland fox was actually two species living on the two main Falkland Islands. If so, it would have made another wonderful example of closely related species living on adjacent islands, as was to be the case with Darwin’s more famous examples of the Galápagos mockingbirds, tortoises and finches. Indeed, Darwin wrote about the Falkland fox again in passing in his ornithological notes, in an extremely famous passage about the Galápagos mockingbirds, in which he first questioned the stability of species:

… I have specimens [of Galápagos mockingbirds] from four of the larger Islands; the two above enumerated, and (3349: female. Albermarle Isd.) & (3350: male: James Isd). — The specimens from Chatham & Albermarle Isd appear to be the same; but the other two are different. In each Isld. each kind is exclusively found: habits of all are indistinguishable. When I recollect, the fact that the form of the body, shape of scales & general size, the Spaniards can at once pronounce, from which Island any Tortoise may have been brought. When I see these Islands in sight of each other, & possessed of but a scanty stock of animals, tenanted by these birds, but slightly differing in structure & filling the same place in Nature, I must suspect they are only varieties.

The only fact of a similar kind of which I am aware, is the constant | asserted difference — between the wolf-like Fox of East & West Falkland Islds.

— If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks the zoology of Archipelagoes — will be well worth examining; for such facts would undermine the stability of Species.

But, by the time Darwin came to edit The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, he was no longer of the opinion that the Falklands fox comprised two distinct species, commenting:

… Mr. Gray, of the British Museum, had the kindness to compare in my presence the specimens deposited there by Captain Fitzroy, but he could not detect any essential difference between them.

Had Darwin been more convinced that the Falklands fox comprised two species, he might well have given it/them more prominence in On the Origin of Species. As it was, however, the poor creature only earns a passing mention:

… as yet I have not found a single instance, free from doubt, of a terrestrial mammal (excluding domesticated animals kept by the natives) inhabiting an island situated above 300 miles from a continent or great continental island; and many islands situated at a much less distance are equally barren. The Falkland Islands, which are inhabited by a wolf-like fox, come nearest to an exception; but this group cannot be considered as oceanic, as it lies on a bank connected with the mainland; moreover, icebergs formerly brought boulders to its western shores, and they may have formerly transported foxes, as so frequently now happens in the arctic regions.

Nowadays, the Falkland fox is known by the scientific name Dusicyon australis, meaning literally foolish dog of the south—a reference to the animal’s absence of fear of humans.

Perhaps it was this lack of fear which was the beast’s undoing. For Darwin’s prophesy turned out to be tragically accurate: the once-common species was hunted by American fur traders in the 1830s, and was later persecuted by Scottish settlers wishing to protect their sheep.

It is believed that the last individual Falkland fox was killed at Shallow Bay, West Falkland in 1876.

Not so the hapless fox encountered by Charles Darwin in the Chiloé Archipelago:

In the evening we reached the island of San Pedro, where we found the Beagle at anchor. In doubling the point, two of the officers landed to take a round of angles with the theodolite. A fox (Canis fulvipes), of a kind said to be peculiar to the island, and very rare in it, and which is a new species, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer. This fox, more curious or more scientific, but less wise, than the generality of his brethren, is now mounted in the museum of the Zoological Society.

The species, which now has the scientific classification Lycalopex fulvipes and the highly appropriate common name Darwin’s fox, is still extremely rare, and and is listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union.

Darwin’s fox (cc Prof. Fernando Bórquez Bórquez)

Darwin made quite a habit of braining specimens with his geological hammer, which I got to examine at the London Natural History Museum’s wonderful Darwin exhibition a couple of years ago. I did not notice any spots of blood.

Some recently uncovered missing links

Awesome! Thanks, Bill.

February 20th. – This day has been memorable in the annals of Valdivia, for the most severe earthquake experienced by the oldest inhabitant. I happened to be on shore, and was lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on suddenly, and lasted two minutes, but the time appeared much longer. The rocking of the ground was very sensible. The undulations appeared to my companion and myself to come from due east, whilst others thought they proceeded from south-west: this shows how difficult it sometimes is to perceive the directions of the vibrations. There was no difficulty in standing upright, but the motion made me almost giddy: it was something like the movement of a vessel in a little cross-ripple, or still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, which bends under the weight of his body. A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid; – one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced. In the forest, as a breeze moved the trees, I felt only the earth tremble, but saw no other effect. Captain Fitz Roy and some officers were at the town during the shock, and there the scene was more striking; for although the houses, from being built of wood, did not fall, they were violently shaken, and the boards creaked and rattled together. The people rushed out of doors in the greatest alarm. It is these accompaniments that create that perfect horror of earthquakes, experienced by all who have thus seen, as well as felt, their effects. Within the forest it was a deeply interesting, but by no means an awe- exciting phenomenon. The tides were very curiously affected. The great shock took place at the time of low water; and an old woman who was on the beach told me that the water flowed very quickly, but not in great waves, to high- water mark, and then as quickly returned to its proper level; this was also evident by the line of wet sand. The same kind of quick but quiet movement in the tide happened a few years since at Chiloe, during a slight earthquake, and created much causeless alarm. In the course of the evening there were many weaker shocks, which seemed to produce in the harbour the most complicated currents, and some of great strength.

The earthquake that Darwin witnessed first-hand in 1835 destroyed the town of Concepcíon. Here’s hoping today’s massive Concepción earthquake is less severe.