The Red Notebook

People love quoting Darwin out of context. Quote-mining, it’s called. Creationists are particularly prone to the practice—the one about the eye is one of their favourites— but Darwin groupies are not above cherry-picking their hero’s words from time to time, to prove some point or other.

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.

In chapter 18 of The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin describes a royal visitor to the ship in the large, awkward shape of Queen Pomarre of Tahiti:

November 25th [1835]. – In the evening four boats were sent for her majesty; the ship was dressed with flags, and the yards manned on her coming on board. She was accompanied by most of the chiefs. The behaviour of all was very proper: they begged for nothing, and seemed much pleased with Captain Fitz Roy’s presents. The queen is a large awkward woman, without any beauty, grace or dignity. She has only one royal attribute: a perfect immovability of expression under all circumstances, and that rather a sullen one. The rockets were most admired, and a deep “Oh!” could be heard from the shore, all round the dark bay, after each explosion. The sailors’ songs were also much admired; and the queen said she thought that one of the most boisterous ones certainly could not be a hymn! The royal party did not return on shore till past midnight.

Freedom of thought will best be promoted by that gradual enlightening of the human understanding which follows the progress of science. I have therefore always avoided writing about religion and have confined myself to science.

Charles Darwin, 1880
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (F. Darwin, Ed.)
(…but see comments below!)

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.

As a former card-carrying member of the Glutton Club, Charles Darwin was pretty unsqueamish when it came to sampling strange flesh, but he did not at all relish the idea of eating calf foetus while travelling is South America. Fortunately, it turned out to be something decidedly more appetising:

We did not reach the posta on the Rio Tapalguen till after it was dark. At supper, from something which was said, I was suddenly struck with horror at thinking that I was eating one of the favourite dishes of the country namely, a half-formed calf, long before its proper time of birth. It turned out to be Puma; the meat is very white and remarkably like veal in taste. Dr. Shaw was laughed at for stating that “the flesh of the lion is in great esteem having no small affinity with veal, both in colour, taste, and flavour.” Such certainly is the case with the Puma. The Gauchos differ in their opinion, whether the Jaguar is good eating, but are unanimous in saying that cat is excellent.

Some of my friend’s cattle on the local moor

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.

Charles Darwin was a great experimenter. In his later life at Down House, he conducted scores of weird and wonderful experiments on pigeons, fowl, plants, seeds, dogs, his own children, you name it; he would experiment on it. But he also found time to conduct some experiments during the Beagle voyage. He even got to perform an experiment on that most iconic of South American birds, the condor.

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 hapless fox from the Chiloé Archipelago wasn’t the only canid remarked upon by Charles Darwin in the popular write-up of his world tour. Amongst the others was the Falklands fox, which Darwin writes about in chapter 9 of The Voyage of the Beagle:

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.

In Europe, foxes have a reputation for cunning going back at least as far as the days of the Seventh Century B.C.E. poet Archilochus, who famously observed that the fox knows many things; the hedgehog one great thing.

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.

It’s like confessing a murder. I have been a self-confessed Darwin groupie for almost a quarter of a century, yet, until this year, I had never read what is supposed to be his most accessible book, The Voyage of the Beagle.

No, really, I had never read it.

In my defence, I had dipped into it many times, usually to look up some obscure snippet of Darwiniana or other. And I had read Darwin’s Beagle Diary, upon which large chunks of The Voyage of the Beagle were based. But I had never set off to read The Voyage of the Beagle from cover to cover before—despite owning several copies.

My favourite copy of The Voyage of the Beagle, complete with index card bookmarks.

I picked up my favourite copy of The Voyage of the Beagle in a now-defunct second-hand bookshop in my home town of Hebden Bridge. It cost me £2. I like this particular copy for a number of reasons: I like it for the Charles Darwin signature embossed in (presumably fake) gold on the cover; I like it for the purple, rubber-stamped advertisement on the flyleaf saying “F. Pearson & Son / BOOKSELLERS & Stationers EST^D. 1875 / SOUTHGATE, ELLAND. LEATHER GOODS A SPECIALITY.”; I like it for its proud boast “Illustrated By Eight Photographs”; but I like it most for its size—the book was clearly designed to slip conveniently into one’s pocket. It’s a wonderful format, and one which I wish more publishers would rediscover.

Indeed, so conveniently sized is my favourite copy of The Voyage of the Beagle that it has been an obvious book to take on holiday with me—many, many times. It has travelled the world with me. It has been to Australia with me, where I consulted it about Darwin’s trip to Govett’s Leap the day I also visited Govett’s Leap. It has been to Tobago with me, and the Canary Islands, and Barcelona, and Sicily, and Rome, and Florence (twice). But it has always remained unread.

Until my latest holiday in Italy, that is. In March this year, I sat on my hotel room balcony overlooking the Bay of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius looming menacingly in the background, and finally began to read The Voyage of the Beagle from cover to cover.

And, I am glad to report, it was utterly fantastic. You should read it. You really should. Just like I did. Eventually.

Whenever I read a book, I use an index card as a convenient bookmark upon which I can jot down brief notes about anything that interests or amuses me in the book. In the cases of certain interesting books, I have even managed to fill both sides of my index card. But, in the case of The Voyage of the Beagle, I managed to fill four entire cards! There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there for the Darwin groupie. But there’s also plenty of other interesting, fascinating, and, dare I say it, amusing stuff in there for the general reader. Which probably explains why The Voyage of the Beagle became an instantly popular book in Darwin’s own day.

So, to atone for my sin of having taken so long to read Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, I have decided, over the next few days and weeks, to put up a few posts based on the index card notes I took while reading the book. Please don’t expect anything too profound or insightful, though: I just want to share with you some of the snippets of Darwiniana which interested, fascinated and amused me as I finally got round to reading Darwin’s first masterpiece.

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.

—Charles Darwin
The Voyage of the Beagle, Ch. 14

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.

I’m not a particularly adventurous traveller, yet the only time my travels have crossed paths with those of HMS Beagle (albeit 164 years apart) happened on what is for me is the opposite side of the world, in Sydney, Australia. I arrived there in November, 2000; HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, arrived there 173 years ago today, on 12th January, 1836.

Here’s how Darwin described his initial feelings on arriving in Australia in chapter 19 of ‘The Voyage of the Beagle’:

January 12th, 1836. – Early in the morning a light air carried us towards the entrance of Port Jackson. Instead of beholding a verdant country, interspersed with fine houses, a straight line of yellowish cliff brought to our minds the coast of Patagonia. A solitary lighthouse, built of white stone, alone told us that we were near a great and populous city. Having entered the harbour, it appears fine and spacious, with cliff-formed shores of horizontally stratified sandstone. The nearly level country is covered with thin scrubby trees, bespeaking the curse of sterility. Proceeding further inland, the country improves: beautiful villas and nice cottages are here and there scattered along the beach. In the distance stone houses, two and three stories high, and windmills standing on the edge of a bank, pointed out to us the neighbourhood of the capital of Australia.

At last we anchored within Sydney Cove. We found the little basin occupied by many large ships, and surrounded by warehouses. In the evening I walked through the town, and returned full of admiration at the whole scene. It is a most magnificent testimony to the power of the British nation. Here, in a less promising country, scores of years have done many more times more than an equal number of centuries have effected in South America. My first feeling was to congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman. Upon seeing more of the town afterwards, perhaps my admiration fell a little; but yet it is a fine town. The streets are regular, broad, clean, and kept in excellent order; the houses are of a good size, and the shops well furnished. It may be faithfully compared to the large suburbs which stretch out from London and a few other great towns in England; but not even near London or Birmingham is there an appearance of such rapid growth. The number of large houses and other buildings just finished was truly surprising; nevertheless, every one complained of the high rents and difficulty in procuring a house. Coming from South America, where in the towns every man of property is known, no one thing surprised me more than not being able to ascertain at once to whom this or that carriage belonged.

Darwin was to spend less than a month in New South Wales, before Beagle headed for Tazmania on the next leg of her long journey home.

Darwin’s Beagle Diary, 8th September, 1832

… The Gauchos were very civil & took us to the only spot where there was any chance of water. — It was interesting seeing these hardy people fully equipped for an expedition. — They sleep on the bare ground at all times & as they travel get their food; already they had killed a Puma or Lion; the tongue of which was the only part they kept; also an Ostrich, these they catch by two heavy balls, fastened to the ends of a long thong. — They showed us the manner of throwing it; holding one ball in their hands, by degrees they whirl the other round & round, & then with great force send them both revolving in the air towards any object. — Of course the instant it strikes an animals legs it fairly ties them together.

Darwin later had a go at throwing bolas himself. He described his attempt in chapter 3 of The Voyage of the Beagle:

One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush, and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and, like magic, caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured. Luckily he was an old practised animal, and knew what it meant; otherwise he would probably have kicked till he had thrown himself down. The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself.

Darwin brought his bolas home with him. They can still be seen on display at Down House.

(via Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary weblog)

Voyage of the Beagle, Chapter 21:

On the 2nd of October [1836] we made the shore of England; and at Falmouth I left the Beagle, having lived on board the good little vessel nearly five years.

After which, Charles Darwin remained a landlubber to the end of his days.