The Voyage of
HMS Beagle
by Charles Darwin
***
Who hasn’t heard about
Charles Darwin’s collection of Galapagos finches? But who gives credit to the
fossil finds of South America for their part as muses to the father of
evolutionary biology?
Not even Darwin realized
the importance of the fossils he first encountered in 1833, not quite two years
into the adventure that had saved him from life as a clergyman, the fallback
profession of 19th century middle-class young Englishmen. After
giving up on the study of medicine (the sight of surgeries performed without
aid of then unheard of anesthetics made him sick), he managed to complete a
university course of study (although without honors), the prerequisite for a
career in the church.
In fact, he spent most of
his time at university riding, shooting, and collecting insects, activities
that would prepare him admirably for work as a scientist/explorer of the time,
however questionable they might have been for a priest of the Church of
England. And it was at Cambridge that he met others interested in “natural
sciences” such as biology, including clergymen/naturalists Adam Sedgwick and
Leonard Jenyns.
Sedgwick and Jenyns had
received invitations to accompany the Royal Navy’s HMS Beagle on a survey mission of the coasts of South America. Both
declined due to other commitments, although it’s easy to imagine a reluctance
of each to be the gentleman-companions of the Beagle’s short-tempered Captain Robert Fitzroy playing some part in
their refusals. And then they remembered their young friend. Despite the
opposition of his father (another career change, Charles?), Darwin accepted the
invitation with alacrity, setting sail on December 27, 1831, for a voyage that
would change his life and the world.
Official, he was the Beagle’s geologist. With the scientific
world agog over a new theory of geologic change proposed by Charles Lyell, Darwin
packed a copy of Lyell’s Principles of
Geology to prep for his new job. He would later dedicate his own first book
to the Scottish geologist.
Lyell’s theory of the gradual
change of the Earth over time was at odds with the prevailing doctrine of
catastrophic change. But Darwin found that Lyell’s theory helped explain his observations
of the ship’s early stops at the Canary and Cape Verde islands fringing the
Atlantic coast of Africa. As the Beagle
coasted around South America, Darwin plunged into geology with a vengeance.
“The Beagle arrived (in Argentina) on the 24th of August,” he
noted in his journal. “With Captain Fitz Roy’s consent, I was left behind, to
travel by land to Buenos Ayres. . . (including a section) highly interesting
from the number and extraordinary character of the remains of gigantic
land-animals embedded in it.”
Among these were fossils
whose size first led Darwin to believe they were rhinoceros. They were later
identified as species of extinct giant ground sloths. One would later be named Mylodon darwinii after its discoverer.
Collecting fossils as
gleefully as he did everything else, including an attempt to use the bola
weapon of the South American gauchos he rode with, he moved on. Galapagos and
its finches were still in the future and it would be years more before he began
to unravel the mystery of the giant bones.
(Next Friday, Adventure
classics continues an August of adventures at sea with Darwin’s Voyage of HMS Beagle.)
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