In The End of Enlightenment, Richard Whatmore explores why, after considerable initial success, the Enlightenment project was seen to have failed by a number of contemporary figures, including David Hume, Shelburne, Catherine Macaulay, Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Although some of these people differed politically, there seems to have been broad agreement that Enlightenment ideals had been gradually superseded as individual nations' policies and activities began to be steered by commercial interests intent on expanding markets through war or imperialism. In addition, having initially been supported by many proponents of Enlightenment, the bloody aftermath of the French Revolution and the subsequent rise of Napoleon Bonaparte were to put many off the idea of Enlightenment, one outcome of which was the rise of Romanticism.

Reading this book, I was constantly conscious of the parallels between the end of the Age of Enlightenment and our current political climate. Indeed, as Whatmore states early in this book:

Our predicament today is very much like that of the eighteenth century in the sense that they too saw themselves to be on the edge of a precipice. If the fall came, civilization would end, liberty would be lost, poverty would abound and new forms of slavery would arise. The eighteenth century was not the origin of our present discontents, but the parallel is clear and important.

A grand vision brought down by commercial interests: a sobering read.

In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin likened how we might classify organic species to how we might classify human languages—by genealogical descent:

It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the world; and if all extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly changing dialects, had to be included, such an arrangement would, I think, be the only possible one. […] The various degrees of difference in the languages from the same stock, would have to be expressed by groups subordinate to groups; but the proper or even only possible arrangement would still be genealogical; and this would be strictly natural, as it would connect together all languages, extinct and modern, by the closest affinities, and would give the filiation and origin of each tongue.

Proto explores how the members of one major group of the world’s languages, the Indo-European languages, relate to each other through common descent from a hypothesised shared common ancestor, Proto-Indo European. It explains how linguists, geneticists and archaeologists have worked together—sometimes in disagreement—to piece together groups subordinate to groups in a large family tree of living and extinct languages encompassing tongues as apparently diverse as ancient Hittite (a member of the extinct Anatolian group of languages); Sanskrit, Urdu, and Persian (Indo-Iranian languages); French, Latin and Romanian (Italic languages); Welsh, Manx and Irish Gaelic (Celtic languages); Old Prussian, Polish and Russian (Balto-Slavic languages); and Yiddish, Gothic and English (Germanic languages).

The book explores how these and many other languages all descend from a language spoken by a small group of people living near the Black Sea around 5,000 years ago. It describes how, as the descendents of these people spread and diverged, so did the languages they spoke, sometimes mixing and merging with other languages encountered on the journey.

The book is particular good at explaining how this family-tree of languages was gradually pieced together from a multi-discipline mix of clues concerning cultures (physical artefacts), peoples (genetics) and the languages themselves. It’s a fascinating read.

For the non-technically inclined among you, all this means is:

• the site is more secure (for you and me)
• the addresses of all pages on the site now begin with https:// rather than http://

Despite the address changes, any old links from other sites should be forwarded automatically to the new addresses, as should any bookmarks in your browsers.

The old addresses for the site’s RSS feeds should also continue to work, but, if you want to update your RSS reader, the new combined feed address is:

https://friendsofdarwin.com/metafeed.xml

…Small incremental improvements over time!

Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker was, many years ago, the first book I read about evolution. I enjoyed it immensely, even though I frequently found myself thinking, ‘Yes, but…’ as I was presented with Dawkins’s gene-centric view of the living world. That book led me to the essays of Stephen Jay Gould, whose views Dawkins frequently disparaged. Reading Gould turned me into the incorrigible Darwin nerd that I am. So Dawkins has plenty to answer for.

Dawkins’ latest book, The Genetic Book of the Dead, has the air of a finale about it, providing something of recap of themes raised in earlier books. I enjoyed the first six chapters immensely—not least because they cover similar ground to a long-pondered (and, at the rate I write, unlikely-to-be-realised) future book of my own. They also cover a number of topics also covered in my current work-in-progress, including the evolutionary history of whales, crustacean anatomy, and echolocation in bats.

In The Descent of Man, Darwin observed ‘Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin’. In the first six chapters of The Genetic Book of the Dead, Dawkins explores what organisms’ current observable physical characteristics and behaviours tell us about their evolutionary histories. It’s wonderful stuff.

Dawkins continues this exploration in subsequent chapters, but places more emphasis on the sort of gene-centric interpretations that are his trademark. As in the old days, I often found myself thinking, ‘Yes, but…’ as I read Dawkins’s compelling prose. This is not to criticise gene-centric interpretations of evolutionary phenomena, which can provide genuine insights; it’s just that Dawkins often seems to jump through hoops to restrict himself to such interpretations—to keep ‘on brand’, so to speak—when less evangelically gene-centric interpretations might also provide useful insights—or at least be a little less convoluted.

But don’t let this minor criticism put you off. If The Genetic Book of the Dead is indeed Dawkins’s finale, it’s a damn fine conclusion to a writing career and well worth a read.

Side note: On a personal hobby-horse, I ought to commend the publishers of the British first edition of The Genetic Book of the Dead for printing it on excellent quality paper, presumably to do justice to artist Jana Lenzová’s copious illustrations. The paper quality of most British books is an abomination and national disgrace. It was a rare joy to handle a book of a physical quality that ought to come as standard, at least in hardbacks.

12TH FEBRUARY 2025

Dear Friend of Darwin,

Today marks the 216th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth… Happy Darwin Day!

By a pleasing coincidence, today also marks the 216th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. The two men have more than their date of birth in common: both bore trademark beards; both had cities named after them; and both detested slavery.

Writing to his American friend the botanist Asa Gray shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War, Darwin regretted Lincoln’s failure to mention the abolition of slavery in his recent message to Congress, in which he had first detailed the purpose of the war:

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 shd 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.

As is explained on the Library of Congress website, Darwin was by no means alone in wishing Lincoln to be more radical in his anti-slavery policies, but Lincoln felt constrained by the U.S. Constitution and other concerns:

Almost from the beginning of his administration, abolitionists and radical Republicans pressured Abraham Lincoln to issue an Emancipation Proclamation. Although Lincoln personally abhorred slavery, he felt confined by his constitutional authority as president to challenge slavery only in the context of necessary war measures. He also worried about the reactions of those in the loyal border states where slavery was still legal. Lincoln is said to have summed up the importance of keeping the border states in the Union by saying “I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”

A recently inaugurated U.S. president who felt bound by the constitution, and who took into account differing views… What a notion!

Natural selection

A book you might enjoy:

Darwin’s Sacred Cause by Adrian Desmond and James Moore.

A book exploring how Charles Darwin’s abhorrence of slavery influenced his science.

More book reviews »

Missing links

Some Darwin-related articles you might find of interest:

1. Caricatures of Darwin and evolution
   A new online collection of hundreds of caricatures and satirical images referring to Darwin and evolution (from the wonderful Darwin Online, obviously).
2. The naturalist and the neurologist: on Charles Darwin and James Crichton-Browne
   An exploration of Charles Darwin’s photograph collection, including portraits of mental patients given to him by the neurologist James Crichton-Browne, who provided information for Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
3. Beyond evolution: Alfred Russel Wallace’s critique of the 19th century world
   Wallace’s observations of social exploitation in Wales and the Indonesian Archipelago compelled him to take a stand against the British establishment. He also recognised the ecological destruction caused by colonialism, making him one of the world’s first global environmentalists.
4. ‘A neural fossil’: human ears try to move when listening, scientists say
   Researchers have found that, while most humans can’t move their ears, vestiges of our ancestors’ ear-orienting system remain in what has been called a ‘neural fossil’.
   Original paper: Electromyographic correlates of effortful listening in the vestigial auriculomotor system
5. Reflections on punctuated equilibria
   Fifty years after its publication, Niles Eldredge reflects on his influential paper, jointly written with the late Stephen Jay Gould, on ‘punctuated equilibria’ in evolution.
6. How—and how not—to think about the role randomness plays in evolution (video)
   Evolution isn’t linear and it doesn’t have a masterplan—a microbiologist explains the role of randomness in the process
7. Barn swallow research offers real-time insight on how new species form
   Biologists have used genetic sequencing from barn swallows around the world to provide evidence that sexual selection, in which organisms choose mates based on traits they find attractive, drives the emergence of new species.
8. Why do plants wiggle? Scientists solve age-old mystery that puzzled Charles Darwin
   A study has revealed that sunflowers’ erratic movements help them locate sunlight.
9. Explosive pollen wars: plants fight for pollen-space on pollinators
   Scientists have provided empirical evidence that pollen grains of rival plants may compete with one another for space on pollinators.

Journal of researches

Since the last newsletter, I reached two major Darwinian milestones: I completed reading all 30 volumes of Darwin’s correspondence, and, I finally completed the first(-and-a-halfth) draft of my book Through Darwin’s Eyes. At 100,000 words, it now needs to evolve into something leaner and better adapted for future readers.

Expression of Emotions

Thanks as always for reading this newsletter. I’m hoping to make them a bit more frequent than they have been—but not too frequent.

If you know anyone who might enjoy this newsletter, please share it with them. Personal recommendations are the best way to spread the word.

See you next time!

Richard Carter, FCD
friendsofdarwin.com
richardcarter.com

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I have now spent sixteen years gathering material for the longest time-lapse movie ever. Or should that be shortest?

Owning, and actually reading, Darwin's complete correspondence had been a bucket-list item for me ever since I heard of its existence back in 1993. I immediately ordered the first eight volumes, which were all that had been published at the time. These books do not come cheap. My local bookshop was so delighted with my impressive initial order that they opened early, letting me in through the back door so I could load the heavy books into the boot of my car. I ended up buying almost all the subsequent volumes from the same bookshop. Look after your local bookshop, and it will look after you!

I devoured the first eight volumes of correspondence, which covered Darwin's childhood; his education at Edinburgh and Cambridge universities; and his five-year voyage around the world aboard HMS Beagle. Darwin then spent a few years in London, publishing his research from the Beagle voyage, building his reputation as a man of science, and first devising his (r)evolutionary theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He married his cousin Emma Wedgwood, they started a family, and moved a short while later to their forever home, Down House, in Kent. Darwin went on to spend twenty years amassing evidence in support of his theory and fleshing out many of the details. In parallel, he spent eight years studying barnacles, thereby establishing his credentials as a systematist (classifier of species). Then Darwin received the shock of his life in the form of a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace on the distant Malay archipelago. It looked as if Darwin was about to be scooped! In response, Darwin rushed to publish his theory, first in back-to-back papers with Wallace (who, far from home, knew nothing about his letter to Darwin being published), then in the most important book in the history of biology, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Volume eight of the correspondence saw Darwin dealing with the initial post-publication feedback of Origin, working on and publishing a second edition, making new allies, urging some critics to keep an open mind and just look at all the phenomena his theory seemed to explain, and politely agreeing to disagree with others in whom he saw no hope of converting.

And that was it: I had reached 1860, and run out of volumes to read. Talk about cliffhangers! There was nothing I could do but wait for the rest of the correspondence to be published. Which ended up taking a very long time…Another three decades, in fact!

As the years passed, I collected each new volume as it came out. Well, I say I collected them, but it was usually my partner, Jen, who bought them for me: what better birthday or Christmas present could there be for the Darwin nerd in your life? New volumes came out slowly at first, one every two or three years. I did the maths and concluded, at the rate the books were being published, there was a good chance I might not live long enough to own the full set. But I continued to collect each new volume, without actually reading any of them. I’d decided I didn’t want to read the remaining correspondence piecemeal. If I was ever going to read it, it was going to be a Darwin box-set binge-read.

And then, in late 2022, the Darwin Correspondence Project announced the final volume would be published the following spring, so the project would be closing down. To mark the occasion, Cambridge University Library (where the project was based) put on a special expedition about Darwin’s correspondence. So of course I went! I was even lucky enough to meet and chat with a couple of the project team, and share a few beers with one of them.

As the new year approached, knowing I would finally own the full set on my birthday in April, I decided it was time to finally start reading the remaining correspondence. So, on 1st January 2023, I began what I dubbed my Daily Darwin project, in which I would try to read at least ten pages of Darwin’s correspondence every day (excluding the rare occasions I was away from home). And, uniquely for my New-Year’s resolutions, I’m proud to say I stuck to this one, not missing a single day! Over the next twenty-three months, I steadily worked my way through the last twenty-two volumes of Darwin’s correspondence—and I loved every minute of it!

I read as Darwin continued work on his long-planned (but never finished) ‘big book’ on species, of which Origin was only supposed to have been an ‘abstract’ (large chunks of this unfinished work were eventually incorporated into other books). I read as Darwin researched and wrote on domesticated species; experimented and wrote on plant pollination by insects; suffered protracted ill-health; devised his own (very wrong) hypothesis of inheritance; and researched and wrote about human descent, sexual selection, and human and animal emotions. I read as Darwin fed all manner of substances to insectivorous plants; explored cross- and self-fertilisation in plants; and brilliantly explained why flowers of the same species sometimes take on different physical forms. I read as Darwin took delight in his first grandchild; researched and wrote about the life of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin; investigated movement in plants; and explored the importance of the humble earthworm in the formation of soil. And, in the correspondence’s final letter, which brought me close to tears, I read Emma Darwin breaking the news of her beloved husband’s death to his best friend, the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker.

For many years now, I’ve insisted by far the best way to get to know Charles Darwin is to read his correspondence. I stand by that claim. So, what did I come to appreciate better about my hero after my box-set binge-read? Too much to write about here, for sure, but how about a few bullet points?

In no particular order, Charles Darwin:

• was a genuinely pleasant, modest human being;
• had a gentle, self-deprecating sense of humour;
• lived to work, resenting any time spent otherwise—including holidays;
• had a tendency towards project scope-creep;
• used the postal system to network with hundreds of different people, sharing ideas, and gathering and sharing information;
• had a knack for charming people into providing him with information, even when it involved considerable new research;
• practised theory-led observation;
• loved a ‘fool’s experiment’;
• disliked public controversy, avoiding it whenever practicable;
• was quick to acknowledge his own ‘blunders’;
• was confident his views on evolution, sexual selection, and the great age of the earth would ultimately prevail.

It felt strange not reading any Darwin, the morning after I completed my Daily Darwin project. But it also felt good not to have broken the sequence in my two-year binge-read. I took plenty of notes as I read each volume, publishing detailed reviews of each one as I finished it (see below). I just wish I’d had the same note-making process in place when I’d read the first eight volumes all those years ago. Which I guess gives me the perfect excuse to return to them some time.

…But not just yet. I think it might be time to catch up on some much-neglected, non-Darwinian reading!

The reviews

(Click a cover to read my review.)

The thirtieth and final volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1882—the year in which Darwin died . It also contains a supplement of nearly 400 letters written between 1831 and 1880, which came to light after the volumes for the years in question had been published.

Highlights from the 1831–1880 supplement

• During the Beagle voyage, an old school friend advising Darwin on an itinerary for an inland expedition up the River Uruguay.
• A couple of years later in the voyage, a similar letter from another contact, complete with maps, describing part of Chile between Santiago and San Fernando. (I have seen and photographed this letter.)
• Darwin’s cousin (and future wife) Emma Wedgwood describing his return from the Beagle voyage.
• Days before its publication, Darwin sending his former geology tutor Adam Sedgwick a copy of On the Origin of Species, while acknowledging his and Sedgwick’s views will be totally at odds.
• Darwin abandoning “with a groan” his incorrect marine-origin hypothesis of the formation of the so-called ‘parallel roads’ of Glen Roy. He later thanks Thomas Jamieson for destroying his hypothesis in such a gentle manner that it was “as pleasant as being thrown down on a soft hay-cock on a fine summer’s day”.
• Charles Lyell informing Darwin that the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, described On the Origin of Species as ‘the most illogical book ever written’.
• Lyell later telling Darwin that Queen Victoria has been quizzing him about Darwin and his theory.
• Darwin stating: ‘I cannot believe that a false theory would explain, as it seems to me that the theory of natural selection does explain, the several large classes of facts above specified. It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain what is the essence of attraction of gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction; not-withstanding that Leibnitz formerly accused Newton of introducing “occult qualities & miracles into philosophy.”‘
• Charles Lyell saying he is having to incorporate recent advances in scientific knowledge into the 10th edition of is book Principles of Geology. These include the identification of the Neolithic and Palaeolithic ages, and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
• Darwin the dog-lover observing, “when I know a dog, I love it with all my heart & soul”.
• Darwin lending his support for a committee for securing medical educations for women.
• Darwin being told of a pigeon that is infatuated with a ginger beer bottle.
• As his work on the expression of emotions drags on, Darwin moaning to his son, “I am sick of the subject, and myself, and the world”.
• Darwin stating his belief that habitual criminals should be confined for life.
• Darwin asking his architect to measure the depths of worm burrows, “which if I asked most persons to observe I shd. be thought to be a raving lunatic”.
• Darwin thanking his best friend’s wife, Lady Hooker, for sending the latest batch of bananas from Kew Gardens, saying they are his favourite fruit.
• Darwin describing his negative views on alcohol to a temperance advocate.

Highlights from the 1882 correspondence

• Darwin replying to an American feminist, Caroline Kennard, who wrote to him the previous year regarding women’s intellectual powers. Darwin opines that, “women though generally superior to men [in] moral qualities are inferior intellectually”. He believes men and women may once have been intellectually equal, but that to regain equality women would have to become regular bread-winners like men—but he suspects the education of children and domestic happiness would suffer as a result.
• …and Kennard’s spirited response, pointing out that women are already (mostly unpaid) bread-winners.
• Darwin observing, “Literally I cannot name a single youngish worker who is not as deeply convinced of the truth of Evolution as I am, though there are many who do not believe in natural selection having done much,—but this is a relatively unimportant point.”
• Darwin’s remarking about his final book, ‘The success of this worm-book has been almost laughable. I have, however, been plagued with an endless stream of letters on the subject; most of them very foolish & enthusiastic, but some containing good fact, which I have used in correcting yesterday the “Sixth Thousandth”.
• Darwin being sent a large slab of coal containing annelid tracks, and his grateful acknowlegement of its safe arrival.
• Darwin writing to an old friend, “We are both growing old men, & I feel as old as Methusalem”, and to another friend, “I feel a very old man, & my course is nearly run.”
• Darwin informing Anton Dohrn he suspects Richard Owen has ‘borrowed’ one of Dohrn’s ideas.
• Darwin on his modest use of wine, snuff and tobacco.
• Darwin writing to Thomas Henry Huxley’s son-in-law about Huxley brilliance as an essayist.
• A letter from W. D. Crick (the future father of Francis Crick, of DNA fame) regarding a water-snail attached to a water-beetle’s leg.
• Darwin declaring, “Linnæus & Cuvier have been my two Gods, though in very different way, but they were mere school-boys to old Aristotle.”
• Darwin’s views on the origin of life: “Though no evidence worth anything has as yet in my opinion been advanced in favour of a living being, being developed from inorganic matter, yet I cannot avoid believing the possibility of this will be proved some day in accordance with the law of continuity”.
• After mentioning he has been very unwell, Darwin ordering morphia pills for potential future use, and being sent revised instructions by his doctor.
• In an affectionate letter, Thomas Henry Huxley, who has heard of Darwin’s latest health issues, suggesting arranging additional doctors for Darwin, without stepping on the current doctor’s toes. In an equally affectionate reply, Darwin agrees.
• Darwin describing how stooping over a microscope is now difficult, as it affects his heart.
• Emma Darwin breaking the sad news of Darwin’s death to his best friend, Joseph Dalton Hooker, saying: “He loved you more than any one of his own family & I am sure you returned the affection.”

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

The twenty-ninth volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1881.

During this year, Darwin continued to respond to feedback about his book The Power of Movement in Plants, and completed and published his final book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. Several times, he expressed sentiments about feeling his age, which were perhaps exacerbated by the death of his beloved brother, Erasmus, in August. On a happier note, the year also saw the arrival of Charles and Emma Darwin’s second grandchild, also named Erasmus in honour of the child’s recently deceased great uncle.

Other highlights from Darwin’s 1881 correspondence include:

• Alfred Russel Wallace continuing an amicable disagreement with Darwin on plants migrating between mountain tops, to which Darwin replies, “How lamentable it is that two men shd take such widely different views, with the same facts before them; but this seems to be almost regularly our case, & much do I regret it.” Darwin subsequently writes to his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker: “Though I differ in much from Wallace, his Island Life seems to me a wonderful book.”
• Prime Minister William Gladstone informing Darwin that, further to Darwin’s representations, he has decided to award Alfred Russel Wallace a civil pension of £200 p.a. After Darwin breaks the news to Wallace, Wallace sends thanks, then further thanks on learning the initiative had been primarily Darwin’s.
• Thomas Henry Huxley on his new job as Fisheries Inspector.
• Darwin placing an order for a new product named Vaseline, and bear grease for his beard.
• Darwin asking Ernst Haeckel to speak with Carl Zeiss to ensure he provides good quality microscope lenses for Darwin’s son Francis.
• Darwin’s benefactor Anthony Rich informing him he intends to bequeath his Worthing home to Thomas Henry Huxley.
• Darwin’s sceptical reply to a letter (written in German) suggesting large birds might be trained to tow aircraft.
• George John Romanes describing his plan to test cats’ homing instincts by abandoning them in the wilds! (He subsequently reports none of the cats has returned home.)
• Darwin’s seeking Romanes’ advice on a definition of the term ‘intelligence’ that might be used to assess that of earthworms. Romanes sends a detailed response.
• Darwin’s admitting to his old HMS Beagle shipmate Bartholomew James Sulivan, “We are growing very old men—or at least I feel so.” To another correspondent, he states, “I shall use what little strength is left me for more confined & easy subjects.”
• Darwin making clear his views on vivisection to a Swedish correspondent.
• An American religious crank sending Darwin a pamphlet equating the universal force of magnetism with the human soul.
• Prime Minister William Gladstone suggesting Darwin become a trustee of the British Museum. (Predictably, Darwin declines.)
• Darwin on his father’s reminiscences of Benjamin Franklin. His American correspondent subsequently sends an anecdote concerning Darwin’s paternal grandfather (Erasmus Darwin) and Benjamin Franklin.
• Darwin regretting removing a famous, much misunderstood/misrepresented, hypothetical passage from On the Origin of Species.
• Darwin sending his autograph to a young autograph hunter saying, “My [childhood] collections led me to turn to Science, & I hope that it may have the same effect on you, for there is no greater satisfaction as I know by experience than to add, however little, to the general stock of knowledge.”
• George John Romanes suggesting Thomas Henry Huxley’s son-in-law John Collier should be chosen as artist for a planned portrait of Darwin for the Linnean Society. (Darwin agrees.)
• Darwin being invited to a lunch being attended by the Prince of Wales. (He does not enjoy the experience.)
• Darwin describing to his son the dreadful weather in the Lake District, signing off, “Your affectionate & dismal Father.”
• Darwin complaining to Joseph Dalton Hooker, “I have not the heart or strength at my age to begin any investigation, lasting years, which is the only thing, which I enjoy, & I have no little jobs which I can do.— So I must look forward to Down grave-yard, as the sweetest place on this earth.—“
• Following correspondence regarding the possibility of creating of artificial diamonds, Darwin hypothesising to his son, “Might not organisms have lived on our globe when it was red hot & pressed by an atmosphere a 100,000 heavier than our present one?!!!”
• Darwin describing seeing a new bird in the Lake District: “I have seen quite close today a British bird new to me, the Pied Flycatcher, & a very conspicuous & pretty bird it is.”
• Darwin sending some thoughts to Arabella Burton Buckley on her draft biography of Charles Lyell for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Darwin telling Alfred Russel Wallace, “What I shall do with my few remaining years of life I can hardly tell. I have everything to make me happy & contented, but life has become very wearysome to me.”
• Darwin’s sending feedback to Joseph Dalton Hooker‘ about his planned presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the history of the study of the geographical distribution of species. Darwin agrees with Hooker on the major contribution made by Alexander von Humboldt. He provides plenty of advice and details for Hooker’s address.
• Darwin complaining”, Everything which I read now soon goes out of my head…”
• Following the death of Darwin’s brother, Erasmus, Joseph Dalton Hooker recalling his first meeting with Darwin at Erasmus’s house. In his reply, Darwin pays tribute to his late brother, and also recalls his first meeting with Hooker.
• Darwin sending a copy of Alfred Russel Wallace’s book The Geographical Distribution of Animals to a young scientist who can’t afford to buy his own copy.
• Darwin’s sceptical reply to a correspondent who tells of a frog reportedly found inside coal.
• Darwin updating his will to leave £1,000 each to Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley.
• Darwin writing to his neighbour John Lubbock on the great advances made in geology over the last 50 years.
• Darwin writing to his sister about having almost no memory of their mother, and on the miniature of her he has inherited from their late brother.
• Darwin’s sceptical response to a report of a chicken startled by an alarm clock that supposedly subsequently laid eggs with clock-face markings on them.
• Darwin stating, “I always admire & sometimes envy men, like Huxley, whose minds seem crammed with new ideas, which they can pour out on the shortest notice. But I am not one of those fortunate individuals.”
• The artist of the famous Punch caricature depicting Darwin among earthworms sending Darwin a proof copy.
• Having read Darwin’s book on earthworms, Alfred Russel Wallace admitting he has hitherto looked on earthworms as a nuisance, and Joseph Dalton Hooker confessing, “I must own I had always looked on worms as amongst the most helpless & unintelligent members of the creation; & am amazed to find that they have a domestic life & public duties! I shall now respect them, even in our garden pots; & regard them as something better than food for fishes.”
• Darwin observing, “With respect to the large arctic mammals, anyone might maintain that large size was an advantage in retaining warmth, from the relatively small superficies, compared with smaller mammals. The number of whales, walrusses narwhals in the artic seas & of huge seals in the antarctic seas, may possibly be thus explained.”
• Darwin stating, “I hate controversy, & it wastes much time, at least with a man who like myself can work for only a short time in a day.”
• Darwin’s son George expressing astonishment at “a piece of the very best acting [in a play] I ever saw; everyone is quite astounded at a man acting a woman so well & he has the extra advantage of being a great beauty & not a more masculine voice than one sometimes hears in a woman.”
• Darwin expressing a strong wish to contribute to a legal fund for a vivisectionist who is being prosecuted.
• Darwin being invited to contribute a paper on the current state of science for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s newly formed science group. (Darwin declines.)
• Darwin admitting he formerly took an erroneous view of the nature and capabilities of Fuegians.
• A letter from someone claiming to possess the original manuscript of an unpublished poem entitled Materialism by Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin. (According to an annotation made on the letter by Darwin’s son Francis, the letter was seen as an attempted swindle.)
• Darwin’s humorous response to the latest autograph hunter.
• Darwin’s old HMS Beagle shipmate Bartholomew James Sulivan writing about live Fuegians being exhibited at a German zoo. He is trying to get them sent home.
• Darwin observing, “I have been occasionally well abused; but it has annoyed me hardly at all, as I am conscious of having endeavoured to discover the truth to the best of my ability & after long-continued work.”
• Darwin admitting he suspects he was in error when he said beating the ground does not summon earthworms.
• Darwin reporting having been experiencing heart pains.
• Darwin on the phenomenon of naming too many new species: “I quite agree with you that it is a serious evil to load our books with new names. Nevertheless the description, as a variety, of any constant difference, however small, between two forms, seems to me highly advisable.”

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

The twenty-eighth volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1880.

During this year, Darwin published The Power of Movement in Plants (co-authored with his son Francis), and continued his studies of earthworms. He also had to endure persistent criticism from the author Samuel Butler, who claimed Darwin, in his biography of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, had attacked Butler’s own published views in an underhanded manner. (Darwin confided to the biography’s co-author, Ernst Krause, that he thought Butler was insane). Towards the end of the year, Darwin also resurrected the idea—abandoned the previous year—of applying for a civil pension for his cash-strapped friend (and independent discoverer of natural selection) Alfred Russel Wallace.

Other highlights from Darwin’s 1880 correspondence include:

• Thomas Henry Huxley advising against responding to Samuel Butler’s attacks. Huxley includes a doodle of dog after the phrase “son of a…”. He also cites Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who once compared critics to the lice on whales.
• A letter from a former neighbour of Darwin, Wallis Nash, about his new life in Oregon.
• Darwin praising Alfred Russel Wallace's latest article—although politely disagreeing with its final sentence, in which Wallace, while acknowledging the ability of evolution to produce separate species, genuses and possibly families, questioned whether it was capable of producing separate orders, classes, and sub-kingdoms.
• Darwin making the excuse to a friend, whom he keeps pumping for information and specimens, that “I hope my work will some day end, but new points are continually turning up.”
• Darwin thanking his children for their surprise present of a fur coat, saying, “The coat, however, will never warm my body so much as your dear affection has warmed my heart.”
• Darwin advising a sceptical French entomologist, “I am sorry that you are so strongly opposed to the Descent Theory; I have found the searching for the history of each structure, or instinct an excellent aid to observation; and wonderful observer as you are, it would suggest new points to you.”
• A correspondent from Japan suggesting using fingerprints for identification, and for investigating inheritance. (Darwin forwards the letter to his cousin Francis Galton, who, it transpires, had already looked briefly into the idea.)
• Darwin sending condolences and reminiscences to the son of his cousin and long-time friend William Darwin Fox, whose father is close to death. (Fox dies a short while later.)
• Darwin remarking, “I know that I am hated & abused by many; but I do not care much about this or about fame. It is the one advantage of advanced age.”
• Henry Pitman (of shorthand fame) asking to see the letters of Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus regarding his use of shorthand.
• Darwin expressing his continuing confidence in natural selection to explain biological features: “If I think continuously on some half-dozen structures of which we can at present see no uses, I can persuade myself that natural selection is of quite subordinate importance. On the other hand when I reflect on the innumerable structures, especially in plants, which 20 years ago would have been called simply ‘morphological’ & useless, & which are now known to be highly important, I can persuade myself that every structure may have been developed through natural selection.”
• Darwin briefly explaining his note-making system to Alphonse de Candolle, who uses similar system. (I wrote in more depth on this topic in my article Charles Darwin’s book-writing process.)
• Darwin reporting having invited physicist William Thomson (the future Lord Kelvin) for lunch, and having liked him. This despite the fact that Thomson’s, we now know incorrect, calculations of the age of the earth caused serious problems for Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
• Darwin signing a petition to Prime Minister William Gladstone supporting the abolition of clerical headships and fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge.
• Darwin reporting having entertained 43 members of a natural history society, and, a short while later “67 half-reformed criminals”.
• Darwin advising his son George on how to write a personal reference without actually saying anything.
• Darwin praising Othniel Marsh’s new book on extinct toothed birds, which, he says, provides the best support for evolution in 20 years.
• Darwin thanking his best friend’s wife, Lady Hooker, for her gift of bananas from Kew Gardens.
• Alfred Russel Wallace seeking Darwin’s feedback on his latest book, Island Life. Darwin sends a detailed response, concentrating on the points where they differ, and Wallace sends feedback on Darwin’s feedback.
• Darwin’s oft-quoted letter to Edward Aveling on free thought, in which he says, “Moreover though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follows from the advance of science.” (Note: It was this letter which was once erroneously believed to have been written to Karl Marx.)
• Darwin, having resurrected the idea of applying for a government pension for Alfred Russel Wallace, asking Wallace’s friend Arabella Buckley to discreetly obtain details of Wallace’s history and circumstances, as Darwin cannot do so himself without raising suspicion.
• Darwin sending Thomas Henry Huxley a draft of a memorial for a civil pension for Wallace with a suggested list of potential signatories, saying “I have seldom wished for anything so much, as to succeed in getting some provision for Wallace.”
• Darwin receiving a letter from Florence Dixie offering to send him a copy of her book Across Patagonia, and telling him about her pet jaguar. (Dixie sounds like quite a character!)
• Darwin being uncharacteristically outspoken in publicly defending natural selection against Sir Wyville Thomson’s denial of it in the introduction to the book Voyage of the Challenger.
• Darwin’s old HMS Beagle shipmate Bartholomew Sulivan sending his latest update with news of other former crew members.
• Darwin complying with a request for his signature, saying, “According to your desire I will sign my name on the next page, but good Lord what geese people are about autographs.”
• Darwin reminiscing to an old family friend, Sarah Haliburton (née Owen), “I remember the pride which I felt when I saw in a book about beetles the impressive words “captured by C. Darwin”. Captured sounded so grand compared with caught. This seemed to me glory enough for any man!” (I previously wrote about Darwin’s delight at his name appearing in this book.)
• Darwin admitting, “My whole soul is absorbed with worms just at present!”
• The agnostic Darwin explaining that he does not believe the Bible is divine revelation, or that Jesus was the son of God.
• Darwin’s son William sending a worm-observation field report from a Roman villa which is currently being excavated
• Darwin thanking geologist James Geikie for having established former interglacial periods, remarking, “Reading your book has brought vividly before my mind the state of knowledge or rather ignorance, half a century ago, when all superficial matter was classed as Diluvium & not considered worthy of the attention of a Geologist.”
• Darwin being invited to a private conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The conference is prompted by a petition from prominent religious people who have concerns about the public perception of there being a conflict between science and religion. Darwin declines the invitation, citing ill-health, but also expressing the opinion that the conference has no chance of success. Asked why, he later reples, “in my opinion, a man who wishes to form a judgment on this subject, must weigh the evidence for himself; & he ought not to be influenced by being told that a considerable number of scientific men can reconcile the results of science with revealed or or natural religion, whilst others cannot do so.”
• Darwin’s friend George Romanes reporting that he has obtained a monkey on he plans to make observations, and joking that his wife won’t let it share their daughter’s nursery.

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

Life, death and disease in the Middle Ages and beyond.

Crypt is the final book in a trilogy by Prof. Alice Roberts that began with Ancestors and continued with Buried. Like its excellent predecessors, Crypt explores human remains and associated artefacts recovered on archaeological sites, and what they can tell about the past. While Ancestors dealt with prehistoric sites, and Buried with first-millennium Britain (i.e. the late Roman period, and the early Medieval period—what used to be referred to as the Dark Ages), Crypt is concerned with the high- and late-Medieval periods (c.1000–1500CE). These later periods of interest enable a change in approach in Roberts’ investigations: there are far more historical records available, so much of this book explores historical accounts in some depth before considering how these are supported or challenged by the archaeological and scientific evidence.

In each of the seven chapters, Roberts explores particular medieval themes and events, some very specific and local, others of pan-continental importance, namely: the St Brice’s Day Massacre of 1002CE; the history of leprosy; the life, murder, and sanctification of Thomas Becket; the history of Paget’s disease; the history of the Black Death/Bubonic Plague; the sinking of Henry VIII’s favourite ship, the Mary Rose; the history of syphilis.

As with its predecessors, Crypt is a fascinating read, showing how modern science can give us a better understanding of former times.

Kathleen Jamie is my favourite writer, so it was pretty much inevitable I was going to love this book—which I did. It’s a magnificent collection of what Jamie describes as ‘short pieces, micro-essays, pages, call them what you will […] about incidents, memories, moments that caught my attention’.

Written around the time Jamie turned 60, Cairn might have been published with this particular reader in mind: I first read it aged 59½, and much of what Jamie has to say about getting older, entering a new phase in one’s life, and recognising ‘It’s time to move on, toward whatever happens next’ very much resonated with me.

All the pieces in this collection are short—many of them less than a page. As always, Jamie’s immaculate, seemingly effortless prose is composed with a poet’s precision. It’s lean—never a word out of place. The economy of her phrasing can be breathtaking. A day after I spent half an hour watching a buzzard hovering in the updraught of an Anglesey headland, pondering how I might describe this inelegant imitation of a kestrel, I read the following, and realised I should give up writing immediately:

a buzzard arrived, hanging with folded wings like an anvil in the air

…an anvil in the air is a perfect description of what I watched, but could never so describe, above that headland.

Jamie’s subject-matter is as eclectic as her fans would expect: watching a river dredger with an imagined ghost; listening to the Shipping Forecast; a quartz pebble; attending a climate-change rally; whale-watching from a hilltop; scattering ashes at a reservoir; spiders’ webs; raindrops on phone wires; plastic bags in a museum display-case; a curlew’s skull; painting a door; and more (I nearly said etcetera, but what would that even mean?). There are moments of beautiful melancholy and nostalgia, but Jamie never lays them on thick: she’s too good a writer for that.

Cairn is a book for our time, in which former certainties of the natural world are vanishing, but in which there are still wonders to be found if you pay close enough attention and make the most of what time is left to you.

Fantastic.

The twenty-seventh volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1879.

During this year Darwin marked his 70th birthday, researched and published a biography of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, visited the Lake District, and, assisted by his son Francis, continued his studies into the movement in plants.

Other highlights from Darwin’s 1879 correspondence include:

• Darwin advising a correspondent not to worry about differences in opinion between ecclesiastics and scientists, remarking, “In the course of time ecclesiastics have always managed to make their conclusions somehow to harmonise with ascertained truths, which they at first vehemently & ignorantly opposed”.
• Darwin confiding he has come to doubt the scientific judgment of his friend (and independent discoverer of natural selection) Alfred Russel Wallace, though admiring greatly his ingenuity and originality. (In recent years, Wallace had become a convert to Spiritualism, and performed an about-face on his former belief that human morality and other mental faculties had evolved without the need for intervention from some higher power.)
• Darwin writing to his children regarding additional financial provisions he is making for them, and providing advice on investment.
• Darwin observing, “to kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing a new truth or fact.”
• Darwin forwarding to the journal Nature a letter from Fritz Müller “on a frog having eggs on its back—on the abortion of the hairs on the legs of certain caddis-flies, &c.”
• Darwin also sending to Nature an anecdote he heard from an HMS Beagle shipmate who, in his earlier career, had to leave out water for rats to discourage them from gnawing holes in the ship’s water casks.
• Darwin commenting enthusiastically on his grandfather Erasmus Darwin’s commonplace book, which he had recently been sent by a cousin.
• Darwin reporting having heard that Erasmus Darwin and Samuel Johnson, who both had connections with Lichfield in Derbyshire, met only once and hated each other.
• Darwin advising, via his wife, Emma, that “He considers that the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God—.”
• Darwin, who is currently working on his grandfather’s biography, opining, “I have always thought that there is one golden rule for Biographers, that is, not to insert anything which, as far as one can judge, would interest only the members of the Family. This necessitates much brevity, but it seems to me that it is no use whatever to publish, unless one can make what is published in some degree interesting to the public.”
• A surprised Darwin remarking, “It is something wonderful to me to hear of anyone defending Sexual Selection, which, such is my stock of conceit, I have still full confidence in.”
• Darwin’s letter defending Theist evolutionists, famously describing himself as an agnostic.
• Darwin later saying he does not believe in divine Revelation, and, “[a]s for a future life every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.”
• Darwin commenting on former friend, now critic, Samuel Butler: “He is a very clever man, knows nothing about science & turns everything into ridicule. He hates scientific men.”
• A delighted Darwin reporting his discovery about certain plant roots: “I have proved, wonderful as the fact is, that the apex of a root acts functionally like a brain & commands the nature of the flexure in the upper part. This applies to touch, some other stimulants & geotropism; & I now want to know about light.” (We now know the plant growth hormone auxin influences the growth of root tips.)
• Darwin doodling a skull and crossbones at the end of a letter to one of his sons.
• Darwin asking to meet relative Thomas Henry Farrer regarding Farrer’s objections to Darwin’s son Horrace marrying his daughter. (Farrer later drops his insistance that the engagement be kept secret, and the marriage goes ahead.)
• Darwin on no longer appreciating poetry: “It is a grief to me that some part of my brain has undergone a new form of degeneration, for though in old days I much enjoyed the higher kinds of poetry, now for several years I have not been able to read a line! Perhaps the ‘key-notes’ [a collection he has been sent] may revive my taste, & I will make the trial, but greatly fear that all the ganglia in my skull have become too prosy.”
• Darwin strongly declining a request to sign petition calling for a total ban on vivisection.
• Former and future Prime Minisher William Gladstone sending Darwin his latest book inspired by his reading of Homer. [Having analysed the vocabularies of ancient texts, Gladstone has concluded ancient peoples had under-developed colour vision.]
• Darwin reporting enjoying a break in the Lake District , “but there are too many human beings for my taste”. He subsequently writes to his host, “I am a staunch Conistonite & feel indignant if anyone prefers Grassmere or Ambleside to Coniston”.
• Darwin’s Coniston host quoting John Ruskin, whom Darwin met several times during his stay, as having remarked, before they met, “that if Mr Darwin would get different kinds of air & bottle them, & examine them when bottled, he would do much more useful work than he does in the contemplation of the hinder parts of monkeys.” (Darwin is suitably amused.)
• A letter from the son of the deceased prominent U.S. abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison praising Darwin’s position on slavery. Darwin sends a gratified reply.
• Darwin sending condolences to his friend and former scientific protégé the politician John Lubbock on the death of Lubbock’s wife.
• Darwin being sent a “monograph on the Rectum and its Diseases”!
• Darwin responding to his cousin Francis Galton’s questionnaire on his faculty of visualising. (It turns our Darwin never played chess!)
• On learning third-hand of Alfred Russel Wallace’s financial difficulties, Darwin seeking the thoughts of his best friend, Joseph Dalton Hooker, on the chances of obtaining a goverment pension for Wallace. Darwin lists Wallace’s merits. Hooker advises against the idea on account of Wallace’s spiritualism, and his ill-advised bet against a flat-earther, believing such an endorsement of Wallace would damage the reputation of science. Darwin thanks Hooker for making the counter-argument, which he finds persuasive, and drops the idea—although (spoiler alert) he will return to it the following year.
• Darwin’s views on vegetarian diets.

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

I very much looked forward to reading this book, as I’d been impressed, five years earlier, by a reading given by the author from an early draft of one of its chapters at a Caught by the River event in Todmorden. I chatted briefly with Michael Malay afterwards, nerdishly taking the opportunity to point out the connection between his beloved River Severn and my personal hero, Charles Darwin, whose birthplace in Shrewsbury sits on its banks. (As I keep insisting to anyone who will listen, everything has a Darwin connection.)

I’m glad to say, Late Light did not disappoint. It performs the valuable service of celebrating four uncharismatic, threatened British animal species—eels, moths, freshwater mussels and crickets—and the people who love, study and try to conserve them. As Kathleen Jamie remarks in her wonderful book Sightlines, nature is ‘not all primroses and otters’. If wildlife is to stand any sort of chance in our severely depleted ‘green and pleasant land’, we need to start putting in a word for what Malay, in a useful turn of phrase, refers to as the edge species: ‘animals who exist on the margins of our attention, and who consequently struggle to find a place in our hearts’.

Malay does not, however, confine his writing to the individual edge species in question; he rightly describes the important roles each has to play in its local ecosystems, and the destruction that has been wrought on those ecosystems by our own voracious species. Here he is, for example, writing about the draining of much of the island of Great Britain in the name of land improvement:

Centuries of human activity have profoundly altered most of these places. Across Britain, lakes and pools have been emptied, marshes and fens reclaimed, fields embanked, and a vast network of ditches scored into the land to send water back to river or sea. Formerly the largest lake in Southern England, Whittlesea mere is now flat farmland, while the ‘fenways fearful’ described by the bard of Beowulf are farmed for beets and potatoes.

Being a relative newcomer to the UK (he was raised in Indonesia and Australia), Malay brings an interesting ‘outsider’s’ perspective to traditional British nature writing—albeit from an outsider who has clearly come to love his adoptive country and its wildlife. I very much look forward to reading his next book.

Note: A few days after I finished reading this book, it won the 2024 Wainwright Prize for nature writing.

6TH SEPTEMBER 2024

Dear Friend of Darwin,

In the months and years immediately following the publication of On the Origin of Species, you can sense Darwin’s frustration at the number of clever people who simply didn’t seem to get it. In his correspondence, he repeatedly, politely encouraged sceptics to put aside any religious or philosophical objections they might have had and just look at all the phenomena his theory explained:

The fair way to view the argument of my book, I think, is to look at Natural Selection as a mere hypothesis […] & 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.
—Charles Darwin to Samuel Pickworth Woodward, 6 March 1860

In terms of Classification, for example, Darwin’s theory brilliantly explained how the taxonomists of his and earlier generations had been able to sort extinct and living species into logical groups and sub-groups based on anatomical similarities: the groupings simply reflected genealogical/evolutionary descent.

In the book I’m currently writing, I make the point that, so well did Darwin’s theory explain how taxonomists were able to group species, it eventually came to define how they do so. Modern taxonomists consciously try to group species by evolutionary descent. But this, ironically, creates a problem in our continuing to use Classification as evidence in support of evolution. We end up making something of a circular argument: we classify species according to perceived evolutionary descent, so is it any wonder our species classifications seem to lend support to the idea of evolutionary descent? Fortunately, modern DNA analysis removes much of the subjectivity of classification, allowing us to group living (and some extinct) species according to mathematical analyses of the similarities of their genetic material. And, whaddya know?, the groupings identified through impartial DNA analysis totally back up the idea of evolutionary descent.

Natural selection

A book you might enjoy:

Sexual Selection by Marlene Zuk & Leigh W. Simmons

A very useful introduction to Darwin’s other great idea. As well as explaining Darwin’s original thinking, the book explores our current understanding of sexual selection, which has been greatly expanded since Darwin’s day.

More book reviews »

Missing links

Some Darwin-related articles you might find of interest:

1. John Tyndall: how a lecture in Belfast 150 years ago supercharged the modern debate on consciousness
   On a controversial lecture given by Darwin’s friend the physicist John Tyndall which attempted to define boundaries between scientific investigation and religious belief.
2. Halesworth to the Himalayas: the adventures of Britain’s greatest botanist
   A potted biography of Darwin’s best friend, the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker.
3. Professor Megalow’s Dinosaur Bones: Richard Owen and Victorian Literature
   On how Darwin’s erstwhile friend and later enemy the brilliant anatomist Richard Owen inspired literary works by the likes of William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Kingsley, and Charles Dickens.
4. What a 100-Year-Old Trial Reveals About America
   A new book on the famous 1925 American Scopes Trial traces a long-simmering culture war—and the fear that often drives both sides.
5. Biologist Rosemary Grant: ‘Evolution happens much quicker than Darwin thought’
   The evolutionary expert discusses the triumphs and challenges of the groundbreaking research on Galápagos Islands finches she undertook with her husband, Peter,
6. Darwin’s fear was unjustified: study suggests fossil record gaps not a major issue
   A new study has examined how the incompleteness of the fossil record influences the reconstruction of evolutionary history. Surprisingly, it’s not such a big issue.
   Original paper: Identification of the mode of evolution in incomplete carbonate successions
7. How animals are changing to cope with stronger heatwaves
   How some animal species are responding to global heating.
8. Mass extinction 66 million years ago triggered rapid evolution of bird genomes, study finds
   How early birds evolved in the aftermath of the asteroid strike that devastated the earth 66 million years ago.
   Original paper: Genome and life-history evolution link bird diversification to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction
9. Female giraffes drove the evolution of long giraffe necks in order to feed on the most nutritious leaves, new research suggests
   It’s been a much debated topic: was it natural selection or sexual selection that drove the evolution of giraffes’ long necks? A new study suggests the former—but I predict this one will continue to run and run.
   Original paper: Sexual dimorphisms in body proportions of Masai giraffes and the evolution of the giraffe’s neck
10. Beetles conquered Earth by evolving their own biochemical laboratory, new study finds
    Beetles represent about a quarter of all described lifeforms. What’s the key to their success? A new study of rove beetles, the largest family of beetles, suggests it might be their chemical defence glands.

Journal of researches

At the start of this newsletter, I explained how, thanks to evolutionary theory, taxonomists have changed how they look at the world. They now take evolution as a given, using the idea to define how they classify species.

It’s not just taxonomists. In addition to Classification, one of the other phenomena Darwin frequently cited as being explained by his theory was that of Geological Succession. In other words, fossil sequences. When the geologists of his and earlier generations worked out the relative ages of different layers of rocks by considering their stratigraphy—how they were ordered one on top of the next, and how they intersected—the fossil sequences within those rocks, when arranged in chronological order, reflected the sequences we would expect to see as species evolved over time.

I recently came across a letter from Darwin to an Austrian geologist named Edmund Mojsisovics von Mojsvár. In his latest book, The Dolomite Reefs of South Tyrol and Veneto (1878–9), Mojsisovics von Mojsvár took Darwin’s theory of evolution as a given, and argued that rocks should be assigned relative dates according to the fossils they contained, rather than relying solely on stratigraphic analysis.

A delighted Darwin wrote:

What a wonderful change in the future of geological chronology you indicate, by assuming the descent-theory to be established, & then taking the graduated changes of the same group of organisms as the true standard! I never hoped to live to see such a step even proposed by anyone.

Nowadays, rocks are routinely dated according to the fossils they contain. But fortunately, this doesn’t create a problem in our continuing to use Geological Succession as evidence in support of evolution, as there are other ways to independently date rocks, including traditional stratigraphy, and more modern methods such as radiometric and thermoluminescent dating. And, whaddya know?, the fossil sequences revealed within the rocks, when arranged in chronological order, once again totally back up the idea of evolutionary descent.

Expression of Emotions

Thanks as always for reading this newsletter. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends—and, if you didn’t, please share it with your enemies.

See you next time!

Richard Carter, FCD
friendsofdarwin.com
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In this posthumously published collection of essays, the late Barry Lopez writes about paying attention to the natural world, and to indigenous cultures. He recounts events and encounters from his extensive travels, philosophises about our relationship with our planet and its other inhabitants, and describes places that hold special meaning for him. In a few of the essays, he also writes about being sexually abused as a child.

It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Lopez’s work that there are many thoughtfully observed passages in this collection. I was particularly moved by some of the later essays on the subject of rivers. Here he is, for example, describing his local river:

I could’t say that I knew the McKenzie after my first year here. I had to nearly drown in it once, trying to swim across from bank to bank one day and dangerously misjudging the strength of the river’s flow. I had to watch a black bear wade through a patch of redds, biting through the spines of adult salmon. I had to come into the habit of walking its stony bed upstream and downstream, in daylight and at midnight, bracing myself with a hiker’s pole and calculating each slippery step, the water vibrating the pole in my hand like a bowstring and breaking hard over my thighs. I had to see how the surface of the river changed during a rainstorm, with the peening rain filling in the troughs and hammering down the crests. I had to become more than just acquainted with the phenomenon. I had to study beaver falling alders into its back eddies, great blue herons stab-fishing its shallows, and lunging otters snatching its cutthroat trout. I had to understand the violet-green swallow swooping through rising hatches, and the ouzel flying blind through a waterfall. I had to watch elk swimming in the river at dusk. But still, I can’t say I know it.

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World is a fitting tribute to a wonderful writer.

The twenty-sixth volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1878.

During this year, assisted by his son Francis, Darwin spent much time studing movement in plants. He also encouraged, and tried to gain support for, Irish businessman James Torbitt, who hoped to use Darwinian principles to breed blight-resistant varieties of potatoes. To his great surprise, Darwin was also contacted by a complete stranger, Anthony Rich, who wished to leave him and his family a significant inheritance.

Other highlights from Darwin’s 1878 correspondence include:

• A geologist informing Darwin of his attempt to calculate a minimum age for the earth based limestone deposit rates.
• An eccentric letter from a religious correspondent enclosing an acrostic poem spelling out Darwin’s name.
• A letter from a young geologist who believes he has proof of multiple ice ages having occurred, with humans and animals inhabiting the inter-glacials. And Darwin’s reply.
• Joseph Dalton Hooker explaining how he has urged against the development of coffee monocultures in the British colonies.
• Darwin receiving a report of the post-mortem dissection of a chimpanzee’s brain.
• A correspondent asking if Darwin’s doctrine, as described in The Descent of Man, “destroys the evidence of the existence of a God looked at through nature’s phenomena”. To which, Darwin replies: “The strongest argument for the existence of God, as it seems to me, is the instinct or intuition which we all (as I suppose) feel that there must have been an intelligent designer of the Universe; but then comes the doubt & difficulty whether such intuitions are trustworthy.”
• Joseph Dalton Hooker consulting Darwin on the publication of the late Charles Lyell’s correspondence.
• A correspondent speculating whether the colours of fruits or flowers might have driven the evolution of colour vision in certain animals.
• Darwin declaring, “The principle of evolution is too well established for any one man to shake it.”
• Darwin urging an old school friend, “Pray do not call me Dr Darwin, the title seems to me quite ridiculous.”
• A correspondent hypothesising on how the bravest men in a tribe might end up with more (rather than fewer) offspring.
• Darwin’s old HMS Beagle shipmate, Bartholomew James Sulivan, suggesting they remotely ‘adopt’ one of the grandsons of ‘Jemmy Button’ (real name, Orundellico: one of the Fuegians aboard the ship) at the mission station in Ushuaia. (It turns out the boy has apparently already been adopted, but [spoiler alert] he hasn’t really, so is adopted by Sulivan, Darwin and a few other former shipmates the following year.)
• A correspondent sending an illustration of a snail found attached to duck’s foot.
• Darwin gently admonishing his son Francis for neglecting the importance of negative results: “It was a great misfortune that you threw away the notes about the failures; failures often prove as useful as successes.”
• An Austrain geologist suggesting rocks should be dated according to the fossils they bear, under the assumption that evolution is an established fact. Darwin replies: “What a wonderful change in the future of geological chronology you indicate, by assuming the descent-theory to be established, & then taking the graduated changes of the same group of organisms as the true standard! I never hoped to live to see such a step even proposed by anyone.”
• Thomas Henry Huxley sending Darwin an Encyclopaedia Britannica article on evolution which he part-wrote.
• Darwin declaring, “it is so much more interesting to observe than to write”.
• A distant relative writing to Darwin’s son George, offering to sell Darwin a portrait of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin painted by Joseph Wright of Derby. (Darwin was to take her up on the offer.)
• Darwin signing off a letter, “Your insane friend Ch. Darwin”.
• Darwin on the importance of Charles Brown-Séquard's (supposed) discovery of inherited injuries.
• On learning that, having been nominated six times, he has finally been elected as a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences (albeit for his botanical, rather than evolutionary work), Darwin wryly observing: “It is rather a good joke that I sh^d be elected in the Botanical section, as the extent of my knowledge is little more than that a daisy is a compositous plant & a pea a leguminous one.”
• An animal rights campaigner sending Darwin the outline of a proposed book in which humans are put on trial.
• Darwin observing, “Many persons think that what I have done in science has been much overrated, & I very often think so myself; but my comfort is that I have never consciously done anything to gain applause.”
• Darwin describing having recently observed a monkey using an eye-glass, and concluding the animal was more intelligent than his two-year-old grandson, Bernard.
• An Irish scientist reporting someone has observed that extinct Irish elks’ left antlers are larger than their right. He suggests this might have been for protecting their hearts during combat, and thinks the same might apply to extant species of deer.
• Alfred Russel Wallace asking Darwin to provide a reference for his (ultimately unsuccessful) application to become Superintendent of Epping Forest, which Darwin is happy to endorse.
• Darwin informing George John Romanes of the recent exposure of a fraudulent medium.
• Darwin writing to Joseph Lister to suggest using benzoic acid to kill bacteria.
• A letter from a parakeet owner who claims his bird avoids defacating on people, and on the table cloth!
• A letter from a lepidopterist on colour polymorphism, and what we now refer to as industrial melanism.
• A letter from a medium, suggesting Darwin try a number of quack remedies for his ailments.
• Darwin on the tension between science and religion: “I most wholly agree with you that there is no reason why the disciples of either school should attack each other with bitterness, though each upholding strictly their beliefs.”
• Darwin adding his name to an unsuccessful petition for Cambridge University to drop its requirement for sudents to be able to read ancient Greek.
• Darwin sounding out (pun intended) John Tyndall on using a siren to test plants’ responses to sound. He subsequently borrows a siren from Tyndall. The experiment was not a success.

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

The twenty-fifth volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1877.

During 1877, Darwin completed and published his book The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species, which he incorrectly believed would be his last. He also published a paper entitled A Biographical Sketch of an Infant, which was based on observations he had made many years earlier of his first child, William.

Working closely with his son Francis, Darwin spent much of the year investigating the movement of plants, and the waxy blooms on certain fruits and leaves. He also encouraged a number of friends and family-members to carry out observations on earthworms. The year also saw Darwin receiving a number of tributes and honours, including a specially commissioned photograph album of German and Austrian scientists, a similar album of Dutch admirers, and an honorary Doctor of Law degree from his alma mater, Cambridge University.

Highlights from Darwin’s correspondence in this volume include:

• Darwin’s views on girls’ being allowed to study physiology. (He is fairly progressive, but says it’s more important for boys to study the subject as no woman has yet advanced the science!)
• Darwin’s delight at August Weismann’s paper arguing that caterpillar spots make them resemble snakes. He had previously thought the idea fanciful.
• A long letter enclosing a photograph album of Darwin’s Dutch scientific disciples, and Darwin’s grateful reply: “I am well aware that my books could never have been written and would not have made any impression on the public mind, had not an immense amount of material been collected by a long series of admirable observers; & it is to them that honour is chiefly due.”
• Having, a short while later, received a similar album from German and Austrian scientists, Darwin gives a brief account of when he first became convinced that species evolve:“When I was on board the Beagle, I believed in the permanence of Species, but, as far as I can remember, vague doubts occasionally flitted across my mind. On my return home in the autumn of 1836, I immediately began to prepare my journal for publication, and then saw, how many facts indicated the common descent of species, so that in July 1837 I opened a note book to record any facts which might bear on the question. But I did not become convinced that species were mutable until, I think, two or three years had elapsed.”
• A letter from a fan who intends to name his son after Darwin.
• A correspondent claiming human vestigial tails are common on a particular Indonesian island.
• Darwin recounting a home visit from former (and future) Prime Minister William Gladstone: “I never saw him before & was much pleased with him: I expected a stern, overwhelming sort of man, but found him as soft & smooth as butter, & very pleasant.”
• A letter from the trainer of a talented cockatoo!
• Darwin recalling finding a mastodon fossil in South America. The gauchos he was with thought it was a large, burrowing animal like a chinchilla.
• Darwin expressing pleasure at George Romanes’ negative results after investigating a ‘rogue’ medium.
• Darwin being amused at having been abused by an archimandrite (senior figure in Eastern Orthodox Church).
• A letter from an Irishman challenging Darwin’s quoting other writers’ anti-Irish sentiments in The Descent of Man.
• Joseph Dalton Hooker describing being pestered by the Emperor of Brazil for a meeting with Darwin.
• Joseph Dalton Hooker on being made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India.
• Darwin opining: ‘I am as great an admirer as any man can be of H[erbert] Spencer’s genius; but his deductive style of putting almost everything never satisfies me, & the conclusion which I continually draw is that “here is a grand suggestion for many years work.”.’
• Darwin adding his name to a petition supporting native voting rights in South Africa.
• Alfred Russel Wallace once again politely disagreeing with Darwin regarding female choice in sexual selection, and Darwin’s equally polite response pointing out several counter-arguments.
• Darwin defending using teleological-sounding language when describing evolution:“There is much justice in your criticisms on my use of the terms object, end, purpose; but those who believe that organs have been gradually modified by natural selection for a special purpose, may I think use the above terms correctly though no conscious being has intervened. I have found much difficulty in my occasional attempts to avoid these terms; but I might perhaps have always spok[en] of a beneficial or serviceable effect.”
• Darwin’s brother recommending a novel whose heroine “has lovely eyes & does not say ten words in three volumes”. He predicts Emma Darwin won’t like it.
• Darwin’s joyful letter to his son William’s fiancée, Sara Sedgwick, and her reply.
• Darwin’s letter to William Gladstone on colour vision, and Gladstone’s reply explaining his hypothesis that Homer was colour blind.
• Darwin explaining his belief that evolution does not occurr suddenly, at intervals. (But compare this with my article The surprise punctuationist.)
• Darwin providing an example of a plant-movement diagram.
• Darwin (via his son George) getting the great physicist James Clark Maxwell to answer a query about how bloom might effect the drying time of wet leaves.
• A letter from an American correspondent who has been to see P.T. Barnham’s Colorado Giant—a supposedly petrified ancient human—and immediately identified it as a fake.
• A telegram from some Edinburgh students, asking Darwin to become Lord Rector of their university, and Darwin’s polite refusal.
• A letter from a correspondent who has noticed that merging (using a stereo viewer) photographs of different people taken from similar angles makes them look more attractive. (Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton had previously noticed blended faces appear more attractive.)
• A highly detailed, illustrated memorandum regarding Roman excavations at Silchester and associated earthworm activity.
• Darwin recounting having attended his honorary LL.D. (Doctor of Law) ceremony at Cambridge, above which students suspended a stuffed monkey.
• Darwin thanking Thomas Henry Huxley for the dinner-speech he made, in Darwin’s absence, after the LL.D. ceremony, declaring: “I know, alas, too well how greatly you overestimate me”.
• A long letter from Samuel Butler regarding his latest book, Life and habit, which disagrees with Darwinian theory. Butler has read St George Jackson Mivart and become a Lamarckian—without actually having read Lamarck. (For more on Mivart, see Friends of Charles Darwin Newsletter No. 18).
• Darwin being sent a sphinx moth with a 22cm-long proboscis. (For more on Darwin and moths with long proboscises, see here.)
• Darwin’s cousin William Darwin Fox declaring “I am very glad you are become a smoker, as I hope you will find it a great comfort, and do you much good. Up to middle age I think it does more harm than good, but after, it is often most useful.” (Darwin had taken snuff most of his life, but seems to have also taken up cigarettes in the 1870s.)
• Thomas Edison’s letter to Darwin on insects that emit naphthaline, possibly as a predator deterrent
• A letter from Elizabeth Anne Greaves (who has Darwin family connections), offering to sell Darwin a portrait of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin by the famous painter Joseph Wright of Derby. Darwin later took her up on the offer.

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

Although it seems impolite these days to refer to anyone as a veteran, Richard Mabey is undoubtedly a veteran British nature writer. His books are always beautifully written, entertaining, and thought-provoking. The Accidental Garden is no exception.

In this book, Mabey writes about his two-acre garden in Suffolk, and the many organisms that have adopted it as their habitat. Two decades ago, he decided to model the garden, which he shares with his partner, Polly, on an English common. Not for Mabey the heavily curated ‘revered pollinators’-friendly gardens that are all the rage these days; he prefers to let nature do what it does best, spreading and encroaching, slowly establishing itself, and getting on with the important business of getting on, without any need for human intervention or interference—apart, maybe, from the occasional Mabey prod.

It wasn’t until I started processing my reading notes after finishing this short book that I realised just how much I’d got out of it. It contains many thoughtful humanist insights and observations, and some genuinely moving writing:

Entropy has become a personal affair, and the usual decrepitudes of old age have slowed me down and narrowed my horizons. Bad hips, muffled ears that won't pick up swifts' screams even with hearing aids, an arthritic spine that brings on spells of wearying stiffness. These are hardly essential problems, but they have changed my relationship with the natural world. I've become more physically passive—plant-like, you might say—hoping that things will come my way instead of energetically seeking them out. Witnessing rather than acting.

At one point, Mabey reminisces about having once been unconvinced that fly orchids (which, in his eyes, only vaguely resembled female wasps) could so easily dupe their male pollinator wasps into ‘pseudocopulation’: “For once I decided to put regret and self-doubt aside and try to behave like a proper scientist.” He goes on to describe having used his microscope, augmented by his non-visual senses, to take an intuitive, personally transformative “journey into the orchid's multi-sensorial interior”, trying to experience the flower from a wasp’s perspective:

I might have gone Darwin’s way, set up an experiment on the edge of the beechwoods, manicured the orchids, created artificial ones on stalks with and without fur, and seen what the wasps preferred. Or would I have opted for the perspective I chose for the rest of my life: observed the intimate details as accurately as I could, then created an imaginative construction around them, a coherent narrative, an orchid whodunnit, regardless of whether the reality might be counter-intuitive and undramatic. I always hope these stories can be true both to the material universe and the imaginative engagement that is our species' special ecological gift, but I'm less confident than I was.

Mabey does himself a disservice, here. Darwin did indeed perform all manner of ‘fool’s experiments’ on orchids and other organisms, but his experiments were usually designed to test his own theory-led and observation-based imaginative constructions. The perspective Mabey chose to adopt throughout his life certainly has a place in our scientific explorations of the material universe—which, let’s face it, are the best way to explore the only thing there is to explore.

The Accidental Garden is a wonderful read.

Highly recommended.

The twenty-fourth volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1876, plus a supplement of letters from earlier years that came to light after publication of the previous volumes.

During 1876, Darwin published the sixth and final edition of The Origin of Species (dropping the word ‘On’ from the title). He also published The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom, and the second edition of On The Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects.

Highlights from Darwin’s correspondence in this volume include:

• A religious correspondent claiming to ‘confute’ Darwin’s work. (He also claims to have cures for lunacy, epilepsy, rheumatism, consumption, lung distemper, and foot and mouth disease.)
• Darwin, in mock triumph, reporting his current backgammon victories’ tally against his wife.
• Darwin’s son William sending his father some cigarettes.
• Darwin sending his friend the physicist John Tyndall and his fiancée a teapot as a wedding gift.
• Darwin explaining that the term ‘survival of the fittest’ was coined by Herbert Spencer, but that he finds ‘natural selection’ a more convenient term.
• A letter from a Hebrew scholar quoting holy texts in support of Darwinian theory.
• A correspondent sending report of a supposed ‘missing link’ found in Canada, and of a destitute gold-digger who possesses a letter from Darwin. (Darwin is sceptical of the missing link, but remembers the gold-digger, ‘one of the oddest creatures I ever saw in my life’, turning up at his house.)
• American botanist and entomologist Mary Treat expressing astonishment at discovering a beautiful water lily apparently overlooked by botanists. (She later reports it had previously been depicted in Audubon’s famous book Birds of America, but that botanists had thought it to be an artistic fantasy.)
• Darwin taking great exception to recent Irish correspondent James Torbitt’s proposed advertisement quoting Darwin in support of his scheme to develop blight-resistant potatoes.
• Darwin reporting having been shown Edward Frankland’s pet bullfinch eating the ovules of a Primula. (For more on this topic, see Friends of Charles Darwin newsletter No. 20.)
• Darwin’s son Francis describing he and his wife having been practising ‘dab[bing] down ones fingers’ (i.e. typing) on a ‘dummy printing machine’ (typewriter) in advance of the delivery of the real thing.
• Darwin reporting having visited ‘the Lewes’s’ (i.e. George Henry Lewes and his common-law wife, Marian Evans, the novelist George Eliot).
• Darwin’s letter to the journal Nature on squirrels eating cherry blossom.
• A Darwin correspondent speculating that the human penis is specially adapted for face-to-face copulation.
• Darwin providing feedback (part 1, part 2) to his friend Alfred Russel Wallace on his new book, The Geographical Distribution of Animals. Darwin is greatly impressed with the book, only disagreeing on a couple of points which the two had previously agreed to disagree about.
• Joseph Dalton Hooker struggling to devise a suitable inscription for Charles Lyell’s grave in Westminster Abbey, and Darwin sending some suggestions (which were not used).
• The recently widowed Joseph Dalton Hooker announcing the date of his forthcoming marriage (to the widow Lady Jardine).
• Darwin on the evolution of music and a sense of the sublime.
• Darwin breaking the news of the death, a few days after she gave birth to his first grandchild, of his daughter-in-law, Amy, wife of his son Francis.
• George Romanes commenting on the exposure of a fake medium who was still being defended by Alfred Russel Wallace.
• Darwin explaining he is not disappointed with the reported views of a lecturer who accepts the idea evolution, but who sees the way in which it takes place as obscure, saying, “as long as a man believes in evolution biology will progress, & it signifies comparatively little whether he admits natural selection & thus gains some light on the method, or remains in utter darkness”.
• A correspondent suggesting eagles and kites manage to soar by heating air within their hollow bones, “and thus become an animated balloon”. He goes on to suggest they expel the air backwards to propel them forwards. (Sadly, Darwin’s response does not survive.)
• William Darwin sending his father “one of the most delightful inventions of the age”: a knitted cardigan.
• Darwin’s daughter Henrietta Litchfield discouraging her father from publishing religious views.

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

The twenty-third volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1875.

During the year, Darwin revised The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants for its second edition, wrote and published Insectivorous Plants, and began detailed research for The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom.

The year 1875 also saw the death of Darwin’s great friend and inspiration the geologist Sir Charles Lyell, and of two other Darwin allies: American philosopher and mathematician Chauncey Wright; and historian, explorer and philosopher William Winwood Reade.

During 1875, Darwin uncharacteristically became actively involved in a matter of public controversy in the form of a national debate on vivisection. In this volume, we encounter:

• Darwin’s sharing his thoughts on vivisection with his daughter Henrietta Litchfield.
• Darwin subsequently alerting his friend Thomas Henry Huxley to the fact that vivisection debate is likely to become a pressing issue. Although generally sympathetic to the cause, Darwin’s primary concern seems to be damage-limitation.
• Darwin reporting working with a solicitor on a petition concerning the forthcoming vivisection bill, clearly concerned about “the zealots of the Cruelty Soc.”. He also writes a long letter to Lord Derby, which is subsequently forwarded to the Home secretary.
• Darwin writing to the Royal Commission on vivisection after having given evidence, expressing concerned that a proposed alternative bill would outlaw any vivisection taking place without anaesthetic.

Other highlights from Darwin’s correspondence for 1875 include:

• Philologist Friedrich Max Müller politely disagreeing with Darwin on the animal origin of human language.
• Darwin (not for the first time) cutting off all contact with his former friend St George Jackson Mivart after a second bitter dispute between the two men the previous year.
• Darwin, while working on the manuscript of Insectivorous plants and the second edition of Climbing plants reporting, “I am slaving away solely at making detestably bad English a very little less bad.” And, a short whole later, declaring, “You ask about my book & all that I can say is that I am ready to commit suicide”.
• Darwin receiving an insulting poem, on the back of which he notes, ‘An anonymous compliment’.
• Darwin paying tribute to the recently deceased Sir Charles Lyell. And again. Plus Joseph Dalton Hooker’s tribute, explaining that he has arranged to Lyell to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
• A long letter from Chauncey Wright on the function of eyelashes, eyebrows, etc., and Darwin’s amusing anecdote about a sweaty crewman from HMS Beagle who ‘skedaddled’ when locals tried to alleviate the pain in his eyelids with a woman’s breast-milk.
• A letter from a former royal marine aboard HMS Beagle, who recalls alerting Darwin to a volcanic eruption, and asks for Darwin’s portrait (which Darwin sends).
• Darwin commenting on a portrait he has just sat for: “I look a very venerable, acute melancholy old dog,— whether I really look so I do not know.”
• Darwin’s son George’s sceptical account of séance.
• Darwin’s near neighbour, John Lubbock, reporting having tried to get to the bottom of the local vicar’s personal animosity to Darwin, and Darwin replying he thinks the vicar is being ridiculous.
• Lubbock’s wife sending Darwin a poem about his new book, Insectivorous Plants.
• Darwin commenting on his first book, Journal of Researches (now generally known as The Voyage of the Beagle): “I always feel towards this book, like a mother to her first-born child”.
• Darwin commenting on his latest book, Insectivorous Plants: “no one except a lunatic will read it”. He later observes, “I never can help making my books too long”.
• Darwin providing a brief account to Adam Sedgwick’s biographer of his 1831 field trip around North Wales with Sedgwick, recalling how neither he nor Sedgwick noticed the obvious signs of past glaciation.
• A letter from a female correspondent questioning Darwin’s and Francis Galton’s views on women’s intelligence. She plans to carry out research.
• Darwin being sent an anecdote demonstrating the intelligence of dogs.
• Darwin making observations for John Tyndall, testing for the spontaneous generation of life.
• Darwin observing, “Heaven only knows: I ought perhaps to avoid general and large subjects as too difficult for me with my advancing years, and I suppose enfeebled brain”.
• Darwin trying (ultimately successfully) to get Edwin Ray Lankester admitted into the Linnean Society after his unfair blackballing for in-house political reasons.
• Darwin suggesting George John Romanes try grafting live pigeon skins.
• Bartholomew James Sulivan sending the latest news of former HMS Beagle crew members.

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

The twenty-second volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1874.

During this year, Darwin worked on the second editions of his books Coral Reefs and The Descent of Man, and continued his extensive research into insectivorous plants.

The year also saw a second bitter dispute between Darwin and his former friend St George Jackson Mivart. (I wrote about their earlier dispute in the 18th edition of the Friends of Charles Darwin newsletter.) In an anonymous article in the Quarterly Review, Mivart made reference to Darwin’s son George’s recent paper ‘On beneficial restrictions to liberty of marriage’, seemingly accusing George of condoning prostitution. Darwin was incensed at this ‘scurrilous libel’, soon correctly identifying Mivart its author. He considered taking legal advice, and even dropping his publisher, John Murray III, who was also the publisher of the Quarterly Review. The affair dragged on for several months, with George being allowed to publish a denial in the Quarterly Review, and Mivart publishing a non-apology apology in the same edition. In the end, Darwin’s friends, Thomas Henry Huxley and Joseph Dalton Hooker were drawn into the controversy. Mivart’s ham-fisted attempt at an overdue apology resulted his being boycotted by Darwin’s friends. This side-lining was to do significant damage to Mivart’s scientific career.

Other highlights from Darwin’s correspondence for 1874 include:

• Darwin asking the superintendent of a Yorkshire lunatic asylum to gather statistics on the number of patients whose parents were cousins.
• Darwin reporting having absented himself before a séance, observing “The Lord have mercy on us all if we have to believe in such rubbish.”
• Thomas Henry Huxley sending a sceptical account of a séance he attended with Darwin’s son Howard and others.
• Darwin asking to buy the rented land containing his ‘thinking path’, the Sandwalk, from his neighbour John Lubbock.
• Darwin’s former shipmate Bartholomew James Sulivan sending news of the three Fuegians who travelled with them on HMS Beagle.
• Darwin saying of his former friend, now enemy, Richard Owen, “What a demon on earth Owen is. I do hate him.”
• Darwin recalling seeing his first mistle thrush.
• Darwin signing a petition to save giant tortoises in the Seychelles.
• Darwin complaining about the size and spacing of the typeface in the sixth (cheaper) edition of The Origin of Species. (He also reports having had to tear the sixth edition of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology in two because of its bulk.)
• Darwin observing, “The more I study nature, the more I feel convinced that species generally change by extremely slight modifications.”
• Thomas Henry Huxley sending Darwin an essay comparing human and ape anatomies. The essay was for inclusion in the second edition of The Descent of Man.
• George Darwin sending his father a quotation from philosopher John Stuart Mill describing natural selection as being an ‘unimpeachable example of a legitimate hypothesis’.
• Darwin writing to the journal Nature about greenfinches destroying cowslips for nectar. (I wrote more about this correspondence in the 20th edition of the Friends of Charles Darwin newsletter.)
• Darwin describing mellowing in old age: “I feel as old as Methusalem; but not much in mind, except that I think one takes everything more quietly, as not signifying so much.”
• Darwin conceding he will never finish his planned series of books on species, “…but I have started the subject & that must be enough for me.”
• A correspondent returning the cartilage from a cat’s ear used by Darwin in his insectivorous plants’ digestion experiments.
• A correspondent expressing dismay at the (false) report of Thomas Henry Huxley’s death.
• Darwin’s American correspondent Mary Treat sending field observations of the Venus fly-trap, Dionaea.
• Darwin (the author of ground-breaking books on botany) declaring, “It is a dreadful evil to be so ignorant of botany as I am.”
• Darwin testing cobra poison on the common sundew, Drosera rotundifolia.
• Darwin saying to his best friend, Joseph Dalton Hooker, “I care for your interest on any point more than for that of the rest of the world.”
• Darwin reporting his wife, Emma, had a headache the day after their son Francis’s wedding. (Could she possibly have been hung-over?!)
• Darwin providing a short tribute to Alexander von Humboldt, describing him as ‘one of the greatest men the world has ever produced’ whose writing ‘determined me to travel in distant countries, and led me to volunteer as naturalist in her Majesty’s ship Beagle in her circumnavigation of the world’.
• The agnostic Darwin telling his friend Charles Lyell that he doesn’t believe in immortality (i.e. immortal souls) or a personal god.
• A correspondent, somewhat bizarrely, asking Darwin to draw round his own right foot!
• Darwin writing to Hooker following the unexpected death of Hooker’s wife, Frances.
• Darwin reporting trying to get the government to provide Hooker with a secretary. (The initiative was ultimately successful.)
• The ailing photographer Oscar Gustaf Rejlander sending Darwin a valedictory letter with a taxidermic arrangement of sparrows.
• Darwin discouraging his new young acolyte, George John Romanes, from testing Darwin’s hypothesis of Pangenesis by attempting to graft rabbits’ ears!
• Darwin receiving a letter from an anti-vaxer questioning Darwin’s statements regarding the efficacy of the smallpox vaccine. (The anti-vaxer also sent a second letter.)
• A correspondent informing Darwin of a hen with a human face!

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

19TH APRIL 2024

Dear Friend of Darwin,

Today marks the 142nd anniversary of Charles Darwin’s death. As crappy anniversaries go, it’s certainly up there. But the more I read about Darwin, the more I’m astonished at how much he managed to cram into a life blighted by chronic illness. From small, seemingly inconsequential observations to major (r)evolutionary works, he was always working on something.

150 years ago this month, in April 1874, Darwin noticed many flowers had been destroyed in the wood of the Sandwalk—the path at the end of his garden where he did much of his thinking. He had observed this phenomenon over many years, but the damage seemed to have grown far worse that particular spring. Having examined the destroyed flowers—his beloved primroses, cowslips and polyanthuses—Darwin blamed the local birds. One of is sons suggested they might be after nectar. Darwin concurred.

On making such an observation, you or I might think, oh, that’s interesting. We might even go so far as to spend a few seconds blurting out a post about it on social media to show how observant we are. But Darwin, being Darwin, decided to write a long letter to the prestigious science journal ‘Nature’, requesting feedback from its readers as to whether this flower-destruction by birds was a new habit local to his area, or a more widespread phenomenon. If the latter, Darwin reasoned, the birds’ behaviour must be instinctive. Darwin being Darwin, he soon received plenty of feedback. In particular, the chemist Edward Frankland, who had corresponded with Darwin previously, wrote to explain that he owned a captive bullfinch and canary, and happened to have a large bouquet of cowslips to hand, so had performed an experiment. The native bullfinch bit through the cowslips with precision, extracting the nectaries and young ovaries, while the non-native canary simply destroyed the flowers with wild abandon. Frankland concluded the native bullfinch’s expertise must be down to instinct. At Darwin’s behest, Frankland went on to perform further experiments. This and other correspondence led, of course, to Darwin writing a follow-up letter to ’Nature’, summarising the feedback and adding some further thoughts of his own.

When observing new phenomena, Darwin couldn’t help hypothesising. Indeed, he saw little point in observing unless it tested or inspired some hypothesis. As he had opined thirteen years earlier to another correspondent:

How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

At this time of year, the local greenfinches, bullfinches, and assorted fellow avian vandals seem to enjoy nothing more than biting off the newly opened flower-buds on the large cherry tree in our garden. I’ve noticed this activity over many springs, but had never stopped to think about it before. 142 years after his untimely demise, Darwin continues to show us how to look at the world in a better way.

Natural selection

A book you might enjoy:

The Golden Mole by Katherine Rundell
Interesting facts about remarkable species. An enjoyable light read.

More book reviews »

Missing links

Some Darwin-related articles you might find of interest:

1. Darwin’s plant specimens stored for 200 years to go on public display
   Specimens collected during the voyage of the Beagle have been unearthed at a Cambridge University archive.
2. Botanists analyze the role of pollinators in the evolution of flowers with various sexual forms
   A new study supports Darwin’s hypothesis that certain flowering plant species evolved heterostyly (male and female sex-organs of different relative lengths in different individual plants) to encourage cross-pollination by insects.
   Original paper: Convergent evolutionary patterns of heterostyly across angiosperms support the pollination-precision hypothesis.
3. After 10 years of work, landmark study reveals new ‘tree of life’ for all birds living today
   The extinction of the dinosaurs sparked an explosion of bird species, according to the largest-ever study of bird genetics.
   Original paper: Complexity of avian evolution revealed by family-level genomes.
4. Why do so many beetle species exist?
   Of the roughly one-million named insect species on Earth, about 400,000 are beetles. Diet seems to have played a key role in the evolution of the vast beetle family tree.
5. How seaweed became multicellular
   A deep dive into macroalgae genetics has uncovered the genetic underpinnings that enabled macroalgae, or ‘seaweed,’ to evolve multicellularity.
   Original paper: Macroalgal deep genomics illuminate multiple paths to aquatic, photosynthetic multicellularity.
6. It’s a myth that male animals are usually larger than females
   A new study has found that, in many mammal species, males are not larger than females.
   Original paper: New estimates indicate that males are not larger than females in most mammal species
   Comment: The original paper seems somewhat unfair in claiming that, in The Descent of Man, Darwin accepted as common knowledge the (incorrect) idea that male mammals are typically larger than females. Darwin did (correctly) point out that the sexes of many mammals differ in a number of ways, including in body-size; and he did (correctly) say that “with most animals when the male is larger than the female, he seems to have acquired his greater size by having conquered during many generations other males”; but I could not find any passage where Darwin claimed larger male mammals were the norm. Indeed, Darwin highlights numerous (admittedly non-mammalian) examples where females are typically larger than males.
7. Frans de Waal (1948–2024), primatologist who questioned the uniqueness of human minds
   Obituary of the researcher and prolific science communicator who laid bare the social lives of apes.
   See also: A remembrance of Frans de Waal.
8. Butterflies mimic each other’s flight behavior to avoid predators, show scientists
   Researchers have shown that inedible species of butterfly that mimic each other’s colour patterns have also evolved similar flight behaviours to warn predators and avoid being eaten.
   Original paper: Pervasive mimicry in flight behavior among aposematic butterflies.
9. William Buckland, megalosaurus and the Bible
   An account of a meeting of the Geological Society of London on 20th February 1824, in which two clergymen first presented Megalosaurus and Pleisiosaurus fossils.

Journal of researches

Among well(ish)-deserved short holidays, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks down my latest research rabbit-hole, finding out about the evolutionary history of pinnipeds (true seals, sea lions, fur seals, and walruses). As always, my latest research topic proved far more interesting—and diverting—than I’d realised. I only intended to uncover a few interesting evolutionary titbits about grey seals to mention in passing in my next chapter, but, as ever, I ended up opening a whole can of worms.

Darwin once wrote to his close friend, and inspiration, the geologist Sir Charles Lyell:

A naturalist’s life wd. be a happy one, if he had only to observe & never to write.

To which, I would add a corollary: a writer’s life would be a happy one, if they had only to research and never to write.

(I will finish this book one day, I promise!)

Expression of Emotions

Thanks as always for reading this newsletter. Please feel free to send feedback, and to recommend it to your most discerning friends—or even your worst enemies.

See you next time!

Richard Carter, FCD
friendsofdarwin.com
richardcarter.com

Places to follow me:
Friends of Charles Darwin: Blog • Newsletter • Reviews • Articles • RSS
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The twenty-first volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1873.

During this year, Darwin continued to deal with correspondence resulting from the publication the previous year of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. 1873 also saw him beginning to revise The Descent of Man with the help of his son George. But most of Darwin’s efforts during the year came from the resumption of his botanical studies into insectivorous plants and pollination.

Highlights from Darwin’s correspondence for 1873 include:

• Darwin expressing some scepticism over Francis Galton’s plans for a register of naturally gifted individuals, while stating ‘the object seems a grand one’.
• Darwin (who was extremely prone to scope-creep in his projects) realising “I must remember that I am growing old, otherwise I shd. go on forever with Drosera as I did with barnacles”.
• Darwin writing on the relative importance of external conditions and natural selection in causing new adaptations.
• Darwin thanking Alfred Russel Wallace for reviewing The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals while standing his ground regarding Wallace’s criticisms. In reply, Wallace concedes he might be wrong on some points.
• Darwin adding his name to a petition to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, urging that the herbarium and library at Kew Gardens not be moved to the new Natural History Museum (as proposed by Richard Owen).
• Darwin defending his view that all existing human languages could be “derived from a common stock, far more simple or less developed than any one now spoken”.
• Darwin forwarding an account to the journal Nature of a family of dogs all scared of butchers.
• Darwin later sending Nature an anecdote of a coach-horse that had gone blind, but still stopped at public houses. He believes his own horse might have a homing instinct, and marvels at the homing instinct of turtles at Ascension Island.
• Darwin describing Dionaea (the Venus fly-trap) as “the most wonderful plant in the world”.
• Darwin asking John Scott Burdon Sanderson to investigate possible (nerve-like) electric currents in Dionaea. (Sanderson was so excited at detecting such currents that he telegraphed Darwin with the news.)
• Darwin’s fan letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, commander of a ‘black regiment’ during the U.S. Civil War. (They had previously met, but Darwin hadn’t known about Higginson’s former role.)
• Darwin, having discovered a women’s suffrage supporter intends to present a petition to the House of Commons on which Darwin’s is the only signature, asking for his name be erased unless other signatures are added.
• Darwin writing to Marian Evans (George Eliot), asking if it would be all right for his daughter to call at her home. (In a postscript, he says his wife has complained that he hasn’t asked if they might call as well, “but I tell that I still have some shreds of modesty”.) See also Evans’s reply.
• Darwin providing some information about giant tortoises collected from the Galápagos Islands during the Beagle voyage.
• Darwin writing an affectionate letter to Thomas Henry Huxley, explaining that eighteen of Huxley’s friends have organised a collection for him to help him out of his financial difficulties.
• Huxley’s overwhelmed, grateful reply, in which he admits he had been having a nervous breakdown, going on to say, “Have I said a word of appreciation for your own letter? I shall keep it for my children that their children may know what manner of man their father’s friend was & why he loved him.”
• Darwin referring to himself as (recently widowed) geologist Charles Lyell’s “old & true disciple”.
• In response to a questionnaire sent to noted scientists by Francis Galton, Darwin attempting to assess his own talents and influences.
• Darwin being sent an anecdote of supposed spontaneous generation of life in rotten Easter eggs!
• Darwin sending comments on a book about hay-fever, politely pointing out to the author that he might not be fully aware that wind- and insect-pollinated plants have different types of pollen. (See also. the author’s reply.)
• Darwin’s son Francis sending an account of himself and his fiancée counting the nectar holes made in flowers by bees.
• Darwin agreeing for his name to be included among patrons of a cat show, but jokingly advising against it on the grounds that “people may refuse to go & admire a lot of atheistical cats!”
• Darwin’s famous letter to Karl Marx, thanking him for sending a copy of Das Kapital. (For more on this letter, see my FAQ article Didn't Karl Marx offer to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin?.)
• Darwin writing to his son George, urging him to reconsider before publishing an essay on religion.
• Darwin admitting, “It is precious easy to suggest experiments, & often most difficult, as I know to my cost, to carry them out.”
• George Darwin’s account of attending a séance.
• The new local vicar objecting to Darwin’s application for the continued use of the school room as a working men’s reading room.

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.

My computer-based notes system takes a hammering whenever I read one of Prof. Alice Roberts’s books. She writes on subjects of interest to me which have little to do with my current major project, but which I suspect might crop up in future projects. So, while reading this book, in among my hundreds of notes about Charles Darwin, I found myself making notes about why ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a problematic term; how high levels of strontium in excavated skeletons can be an indicator that the people in question used seaweed for fertiliser; how the etymologies of the words ‘pagan’ and ‘heathen’ both refer to people who lived in the countryside; and how ancient DNA can be used to identify specific pathogens associated with different plagues. (I know, I probably should get out more.)

As with all of Roberts’s books, Buried is a fascinating read, exploring various funerary rituals observed in first-millennium Britain, and the various ways in which we might interpret them. Why, for example, would a significant number of Romano-British burials involve decapitation? And why were certain ancient burials accompanied by blingy grave-goods, and others not?

Roberts discusses various cultures associated with this period—Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon, Viking—and how archaeology has brought into question certain historical accounts and interpretations. In a fascinating section near the end, she explains how the long-standing ‘culture-history’ archaeological paradigm has been challenged by ‘cultural diffusion’ theory. In other words, are changes in material culture over time (artefacts, funerary practices, etc.) an indication of the latest ‘wave’ of new settlers arriving on the scene, or are they an indication of people adopting new ideas from elsewhere? Or perhaps, as seems more likely, is it sometimes one, sometimes the other, and sometimes a combination of the two?

As with its predecessor, Ancestors, Buried comes highly recommended by this reader. I look forward to reading (and making copious notes from) the final book of this trilogy, Crypt.

This is a lovely idea for a book: a collection of short essays on remarkable, mostly endangered species. Nothing too heavy or definitive; simply a few interesting facts about the species in question, some personal thoughts and observations, then on to the next species.

A few of the interesting facts that caught my attention:

• wombats could out-sprint the fastest human, fight with their backsides, and have cube-shaped poo;
• Greenland sharks can live for several hundred years, and eat their siblings while still in the womb;
• hermit crabs queue in line in order of size so each can move into the next largest's vacated shell;
• the first confirmation that birds migrate over great distances came in 1822, when a stork arrived in Germany with an African spear embedded in it.

An enjoyable, untaxing read.

The Friends of Charles Darwin were founded 30 years ago today, on 2nd March 1994. Happy birthday to us!

It all started in the Red Lion public house, at Parkgate on the Wirral, when my pal and regular drinking partner Nigel ‘Fitz’ Longhurst and I, decided it was outrageous Charles Darwin had never appeared on a British bank note. So, on this day in 1994, we dashed off a letter to the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England, asking why on earth not, signing ourselves Friends of Charles Darwin. We later allowed others to start adding their names as Friends of Charles Darwin on this dedicated website.

I've always said I don't think our campaign had much to do with Darwin eventually appearing on the (sadly, now defunct) Bank of England Darwin £10 note, but we still treated it as a cause for major celebration.

Fitz died ten years ago, in June 2014. I was honoured to be asked to officiate at his funeral, and made sure a crisp Darwin tenner accompanied him in his grave.

Since then, I’ve kept the Friends of Charles Darwin brand going with no particular campaign in mind, not least because, in the alarming post-truth era we seem to have entered, I think Charles Darwin could still do with all the friends he can get.

I’m currently writing a book inspired by Darwin, and am investing most of my Friends of Charles Darwin efforts in my newsletters. So, if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe.

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Darwin newsletter: celebrating the life, work and legacy of Charles Darwin.

Rich Text newsletter: science, history, nature, books and other interests.

Thirty years! When did I start counting in decades? Here’s to the next few years at least!

12TH FEBRUARY 2024

Dear Friend of Darwin,

Today marks the 215th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Happy Darwin Day! And happy 15th anniversary to the Darwin Bicentennial Oak!

In April 1871, the entomologist Roland Trimen wrote to Darwin to ask if he could explain ‘that most ruinous propensity of nocturnal winged animals (chiefly insects) to rush impetuously into bright flames’. It’s a question all of us must have wondered about, as had Darwin. In his reply, he admitted to being somewhat flummoxed:

You ask me whether I have any notion about the meaning of moths &c flying into candles, & birds against light-houses.— I have not.— I have looked at the case as one of curiosity, which is very strong with the higher animals, & I presume even with insects. A light is a very new object, & its distance cannot be judged, but how it comes that an insect is so stupid as to go on flying into the same candle I cannot conceive. It looks as if they were drawn towards it.— Sir C. Lyell, I remember, made years ago the difficulty greater by asking me, what stops all the moths in the world flying every moon-light night up to the moon, or as near as they could get.—Perhaps they have instinctively learnt that this cannot be done.—

Over the years, various potential explanations have been put forward for insects in general—and moths in particular—being attracted to artificial lights. Perhaps they evolved to use the moon for navigation, but were being confused by this new, much closer, night-time light-source. Or perhaps they were attracted to the heat emitted by the light.

Last month, a new study (see Missing Links section below) proposed a compelling new explanation: at night, the sky above a moth tends to be lighter than the ground below, so moths instinctively turn their backs to the light to ensure they stay the right way up. When moths apply the same behaviour to a much nearer artificial light, they end up flying in circles around it!

Darwin would surely have been delighted by this explanation.

Natural selection

A book you might enjoy:

Darwin’s Fossils by Adrian Lister
A beautifully illustrated account of the many fossils collected by Charles Darwin.

More book reviews »

Missing links

Some Darwin-related articles you might find of interest:

1. The Complete Library of Charles Darwin - Introduction
   Published to mark Charles Darwin’s 215th birthday, the latest stupendous offering from Darwin Online… Following 18 years of research, a digital recreation of the more than 7,350 titles across 13,000 volumes/items that were once to be found in Darwin’s personal library. Discover the works Darwin owned, used and read!
   The Complete Library can be accessed here.
2. Why are moths attracted to lights? Science may finally have an answer
   Insect flight paths were filmed at night using hi-res and infrared technology with surprising results.
   Original paper:Why flying insects gather at artificial light
3. Blue tit populations closely linked to numbers of moth caterpillars
   The critical importance of moth caterpillars numbers to the population size of a common insect-eating garden bird, the blue tit, were highlighted in a new study.
   Original paper: Population links between an insectivorous bird and moths disentangled through national‐scale monitoring data
4. We’ve found out how earless moths use sound to defend themselves against bats—and it could give engineers new ideas
   Ermine moths’ wings make ultrasonic clicking noises during flight, presumably to confuse bats.
   Original paper: Buckling-induced sound production in the aeroelastic tymbals of Yponomeuta
5. Complex green organisms emerged a billion years ago, says new research
   Using modern gene sequencing data, researchers have dated the emergence of multicellularity to almost a billion years ago.
   Original paper: Phylogenomic insights into the first multicellular streptophyte
6. A newly identified ‘Hell chicken’ species suggests dinosaurs weren’t sliding toward extinction before the fateful asteroid hit
   Rather than a juvenile of a known species, several fossilised bones represent a new species—and shed light on the question of whether dinosaurs were already in decline before disaster struck.
   Original paper: A new oviraptorosaur (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the end-Maastrichtian Hell Creek Formation of North America
7. The violent birth of the moon
   Did a colossal collision with a doomed planet give us our satellite? I found this article of particular interest as it describes the important contribution made by astronomer George Darwin (son of Charles) to our understanding of the moon’s formation.
8. Secrets within the teeth of the first Homo fossils
   New studies of fossil teeth are helping untangle the human family tree.
   Original paper: Dental morphology in Homo habilis and its implications for the evolution of early Homo
9. Navel gazing with Philip Gosse
   On Darwin’s contemporary, a serious scientist who thought the earth was only 6,000 years old, but had been created to look as if it were much older.

Journal of researches

One of the occupational hazards of running a Darwin-related newsletter while writing a book about Darwin is that I keep discovering new stories about stuff I’ve already covered in the book. This newsletter edition’s (entirely coincidental) preponderance of moth-related stories is a good example: I’ve already written a chapter about the ongoing evolutionary arms-races between moths and bats, but now I have even more stuff to consider for the next draft.

As it happens, a few years back, I contributed a short audio piece about bats to Melissa Harrison’s wonderful podcast The Stubborn Light of Things . The fiasco I went through recording my piece was enough to put me off podcasting for life!

Expression of Emotions

Thanks as always for reading the newsletter. Please feel free to provide comments—and to recommend it to your most discerning friends.

See you next time!

Richard Carter, FCD
friendsofdarwin.com
richardcarter.com

Places to follow me:
Friends of Charles Darwin: Blog • Newsletter • Reviews • Articles • RSS
Personal: Blog • Newsletter • Reviews • Moor book • Darwin book • RSS
Social: Bluesky • Mastodon • Substack • Instagram

Fifteen years ago today, I planted the Darwin Bicentennial Oak in my garden. I am pleased to report that it is still doing well.

I have now spent fifteen years gathering material for the longest time-lapse movie ever. Or should that be shortest?

26TH JANUARY 2024

Dear Friend of Darwin,

I recently finished reading Charles Darwin’s correspondence for the year 1871. As I say in my review, it was a busy year for Darwin: in addition to publishing The Descent of Man, he continued working on his next book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and revised The Origin of Species for its sixth and final edition.

Darwin seems to have decided to revise Origin at short notice, primarily to address recent criticism by zoologist St George Jackson Mivart. Darwin had been on amicable terms with Mivart, but their relationship began to sour with the publication a short time before The Descent of Man of Mivart’s book On the Genesis  of Species, which threw doubt on the ability of natural selection to explain certain animal features. This book was followed by an anonymous Quarterly Review article by Mivart expressing similar views. Anonymous reviews were standard practice at the time, but Darwin was in no doubt as to the identity of its author.

Darwin saw Mivart’s criticism as particularly damaging because Mivart was an acknowledged expert on primates who fully accepted the fact of evolution, but who was now claiming natural selection could not adequately explain how it came about. Darwin was annoyed at having been accused of dogmatism by Mivart, and by Mivart’s having selectively quoted and misquoted him. He saw nothing original in Mivart’s objections to natural selection, having already raised and, he believed, adequately dealt with most of them in Origin and elsewhere, but he was concerned to see them gaining traction. Darwin correctly assumed Mivart’s misgivings were to some extent religiously motivated. Mivart, a devout convert to Roman Catholicism, confirmed he was particularly concerned about the ‘unnecessary irreligious deductions’ that might be made from Darwin’s theory.

To address Mivart’s damaging attacks on natural selection, Darwin arranged for the re-publication in the UK of an American review highly critical of Mivart’s book. He then decided to address Mivart and other critics in a new edition of Origin, which he immediately began working on. In parallel, Darwin’s great supporter, and Mivart’s former tutor, Thomas Henry Huxley published an essay criticising both Mivart’s book and his anonymous Quarterly Review article. Thanks to Darwin, Huxley also knew full well who had written the review, mischievously outing Mivart without actually naming him:

[T]here are some curious similarities between Mr. Mivart and the Quarterly Reviewer, and these are sometimes so close, that, if Mr. Mivart thought it worth while, I think he might make out a good case of plagiarism against the Reviewer, who studiously abstains from quoting him.

Ironically, in addressing Mivart’s criticisms in the final edition of Origin, Darwin placed more emphasis on a ‘Lamarckian’ element of his thinking that we now know to be bogus: the Principle of Use and Disuse, which claimed that repeated use or disuse of an organ or behaviour could affect whether or not it was inherited by future generations.

Early the following year, Darwin wrote in response to Mivart asking him to discontinue their correspondence, and comparing Mivart’s actions to those of another former friend:

If I had not been personally known to you, I shd. not have been vexed at the spirit which seems to me & to some others to pervade all your articles in relation to me, notwithstanding general expressions to the contrary. [… Y]our several articles have mortified me more than those of any other man, excepting Prof. Owen; & for the same reasons, as I was silly enough to think he felt friendly towards me.

Natural selection

A book you might enjoy:

Darwin Comes to Town by Menno Schilthuizen
A fascinating exploration of how species are having to adapt to modern, human-centric environments.

More book reviews »

Missing links

Some Darwin-related articles you might find of interest:

1. Darwin in Patagonia: tracing the naturalist’s route around the foot of South America
   A fascinating article revisiting locations visited by Darwin during the Beagle voyage.
2. Down House - A Tour of Charles Darwin’s Gardens
   A video tour of the gardens of Down House, former home of Darwin and his family.
3. Charles Lyell’s archaeological specimens at the University of Edinburgh
   Darwin’s friend and inspiration Charles Lyell is most famous for the huge contribution he made to geology. But he was also interested in archaeology.
4. Study of Darwin’s finches sheds light on how one species become many
   Biologists have analysed nearly two decades of field data on finches in the Galápagos Islands to identify the relationship between beak traits and the longevity of individual finches from four different species.
   Original paper: The fitness landscape of a community of Darwin’s finches
5. Meadow brown butterflies ‘adapt’ to global heating by developing fewer spots
   A study has found female chrysalises that develop at higher temperatures have fewer eyespots, making them harder to see in dry grass.
   Original paper: Eyespot variation and field temperature in the Meadow Brown butterfly
6. Flowers ‘giving up’ on scarce insects and evolving to self-pollinate, say scientists
   French wild pansies are producing smaller flowers and less nectar than 20 to 30 years ago.
   Original paper: Ongoing convergent evolution of a selfing syndrome threatens plant–pollinator interactions
7. Theoretical research offers explanation as to why some animals shrink over time
   The mystery behind why Alaskan horses, cryptodiran turtles and island lizards shrank over time may have been solved in a new study.
   Original paper: Ecological determinants of Cope’s rule and its inverse
8. French cheese under threat
   Cheeses host a multitude of microorganisms that turn milk into curds. Selected by humans, these ferments are not exempt from food industry regulations—to the point that blue cheeses and Camembert could disappear.
9. Scientists crack mystery of how MS gene spread
   The DNA of ancient cattle herders has revealed how diseases evolved in Europe over thousands of years.
   Original paper: The selection landscape and genetic legacy of ancient Eurasians
10. Top 10 discoveries about ancient people from DNA in 2023
    Paleoanthropologist John Hawks on important genetic studies made last year.
11. New evidence that insect wings may have evolved from gills
    How did insect wings originate? This is a question that represents an unsolved mystery of insect evolution. Despite many years of research, it is still not entirely clear from which body structure insect …
    Original paper: Thoracic and abdominal outgrowths in early pterygotes: a clue to the common ancestor of winged insects?
12. Thick ones, pointy ones—how albatross beaks evolved to match their prey
    New research shows how albatross species evolved different beak shapes to make the most of the ocean’s food resources.
    Original paper: Intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of shape variation in the albatross compound bill
13. Can seabirds hear their way across the ocean? Our research suggests so
    New research suggests certain seabirds might use infrasound to find places to forage for food.
    Original paper: Albatrosses orient toward infrasound while foraging

Journal of researches

Some time ago, I wrote about the unavoidably provisional nature of factual writing: how new facts keep emerging, so you can never hope to write the definitive piece on any subject. I see this as a good thing.

This very newsletter provides one of many examples I could cite of this phenomenon. I’ve already written a chapter for my Darwin book about Mivart and Darwin, specifically about Mivart’s claim that the highly distorted faces of flat-fish could never have evolved through small, incremental steps. But, in reading Darwin’s 1871 correspondence, I unearthed plenty more information about their areas of disagreement. As always, I’ve left myself a note to consider incorporating some of this new information into the second draft of the chapter, but I suspect I won’t make any major changes. As I say, you can’t be definitive on any topic; some things have to be left out. Which, I suppose, is one reason I wrote more about Darwin and Mivart in this newsletter. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste!

Expression of emotions

Thanks as always for making time to read this newsletter. Appropriately, I’m sure it will continue to evolve, so please feel free to send any feedback. And, as always, please share it with anyone you think might be interested, encouraging them to subscribe.

See you next time!

Richard Carter, FCD
friendsofdarwin.com
richardcarter.com

Places to follow me:
Friends of Charles Darwin: Blog • Newsletter • Reviews • Articles • RSS
Personal: Blog • Newsletter • Reviews • Moor book • Darwin book • RSS
Social: Bluesky • Mastodon • Substack • Instagram