VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE
CHARLES DARWIN was born in Shrewsbury in 1809 and was educated at Shrewsbury School, Edinburgh University and Christ’s College Cambridge. He took his degree in 1831 and in the same year embarked on a five-year voyage on HMS Beagle as a companion to the captain; the purpose of the voyage was to chart the coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, and to carry a chain of chronometric readings round the world. While he was away some of his letters on scientific matters were privately published, and on his return he at once took his place among the leading men of science. In 1839 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Most of the rest of his life was occupied in publishing the findings of the voyage and in documenting his theory of the transmutation of species. On the origin of species by means of natural selection appeared in 1859. Darwin spent many years with his wife – his cousin Emma Wedgwood, whom he had married in 1839 – and their children at Down House in Kent. He died in 1882, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
DR MICHAEL NEVE is a Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute, London. His courses include histories of the life sciences and psychiatry. He is in the process of preparing an edition of Charles Darwin’s autobiography for Penguin Classics.
DR JANET BROWNE teaches history of biology at the Wellcome Institute, London. She is a former editor of Charles Darwin’s correspondence. The first of a two-volume biography of Darwin, Voyaging, was published in 1995.
Journal of Researches
EDITED AND ABRIDGED
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
JANET BROWNE and
MICHAEL NEVE
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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Text first published by Henry Colburn 1839
Appendices first published 1839
This abridged text, incorporating Fitzroy’s appendices with new introduction and notes, first published in Penguin Books 1989
25
This edition copyright © Janet Browne and Michael Neve, 1989
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
EISBN: 978–0–141–90661–4
List of maps and illustrations
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Introduction
A note on this edition
Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches
Author’s preface
Appendix One: Admiralty instructions for the Beagle voyage
Appendix Two: Robert FitzRoy’s ‘Remarks with reference to the Deluge’
Biographical guide
Cover illustration: the Rhea darwinii, a second type of Rhea found only in the southern parts of the Argentine pampas, collected by Darwin and named in his honour by the London zoologist John Gould.
The principal locations mentioned in Darwin’s text
South America in 1830
The editors would like to express their thanks to Kate Griffin, Nick Browne, Ben Barkow, our colleagues at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine and those who worked on the Correspondence of Charles Darwin for their help and support. It gives us equal pleasure to be able to thank all the students who, over the years, have helped us clarify and expand our views about Darwin and the Beagle voyage. We are also very grateful to Paul Keegan of Penguin Books for his loyalty and patience during the preparation of this edition, and to Joanna Swinnerton for her helpful copy-editing. For permission to use the Correspondence of Charles Darwin in compiling the introduction, grateful acknowledgement is made to Cambridge University Press, and for permission to use the facsimile page on p. 29, grateful acknowledgement is made to the British Library.
1809 | Born at Shrewsbury on 12 February, in the parish of St Chad, the son of Robert Waring Darwin and Susannah, née Wedgwood. |
1813 | In the summer, goes to Gros near Abegele for sea-bathing, some of his earliest recollections coming from this. |
1817 | Attends Dr G. Case’s day-school at Shrewsbury, aged eight. His mother dies. |
1818 | At midsummer, goes to Samuel Butler’s school at Shrewsbury. Butler (1744–1839) was the grandfather of Samuel Butler (1835–1902), science writer and the author of Erewhon. In September, Darwin is ill with scarlet fever. |
1822 | In June, with his sister Caroline (1800–1888), Darwin goes touring and recollects taking pleasure in scenery. |
1825 | In October, matriculates at the University of Edinburgh. In the winter of 1826/1827 he examines marine animals on the shore of the Firth of Forth with Dr R. E. Grant (1793–1874), Lamarckian and naturalist. |
1827 | On 15 October Darwin is admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge, after ending his medical education in Edinburgh. He becomes friendly with his second cousin W. D. Fox (1805–1880) and they share an interest in entomology. |
1828 | Becomes a keen collector of insects, as well as spending time either hunting, shooting or being idle. |
1831 | Passes his BA on 22 January without Honours, and remains at Cambridge for a further two terms. Spends much time with J. S. Henslow (1796–1861), clergyman, botanist and mineralogist. In his Autobiography, Darwin describes Henslow as ‘free from every tinge of vanity or other petty feeling’. In the spring of 1831 Darwin plans a visit to Tenerife and learns Spanish for that reason. In the summer he geologizes in North Wales with Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873), Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge. In August Henslow informs Darwin that Robert FitzRoy is seeking a gentleman companion and a naturalist aboard HMS Beagle for a journey to South America to ‘survey the S. extremity’. Initially Darwin refuses the offer (30 August) because his father has strong objections, the first of which is ‘the unfitting’ of Darwin to become a clergyman. Robert Darwin is persuaded to drop his objections by Josiah Wedgwood II, Charles’s uncle, who wrote in late August: ‘The undertaking would be useless as regards his profession, but looking upon him as a man of enlarged curiosity, it affords him such an opportunity of seeing men and things as happens to few.’ On 11 September, Darwin travels with Captain FitzRoy to Plymouth to see the Beagle, taking the steamer on a journey that lasts three days. He returns to Shrewsbury, via Cambridge, on 22 September and departs from home ten days later for the journey to South America, reaching Plymouth on 24 October. The Beagle’s departure is delayed during October and November, and two attempts to depart in December, on 10th and 21st, are abandoned because of bad weather. On 27 December the Beagle starts on the voyage of circumnavigation of the globe. |
1832 | On 16 january, Darwin makes his first landing ‘on a tropical shore’ at St Jago, Cape Verde Islands. |
1836 | On 2 October the Beagle drops anchor at Falmouth, and on the 4th Darwin returns home to Shrewsbury after an absence of five years and two days. |
1837 | In March Darwin takes up lodgings at 36 Great Marlborough Street, in London. In May he gives a paper to the Geological Society on coral formations. In July, he opens his first notebook on ‘transmutation of Species’, having for some months pondered the character of South American fossils and the fauna of the Galapagos Archipelago. Throughout October and November he prepares the scheme for The zoology of the voyage of HMS Beagle. |
1838 | Works on a variety of geological and natural historical topics, and in September finishes his paper on the Scottish site Glen Roy and its famous ‘roads’, attempting to prove their marine origin. Throughout September and October he ponders transmutation questions and matters of religion. On 11 November, a Sunday (Darwin called it ‘the day of days’), his cousin Emma Wedgwood (1808–1896), a daughter of josiah Wedgwood II, agrees to marry him. In December Darwin is busy house-hunting and often feels unwell. In the last days of the year they take possession of their London home at 12 Upper Gower Street. On 24 January 1839 Darwin is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and on the 29th, he and Emma are married in Staffordshire. |
THE VOYAGE of the Beagle was, without a doubt, the most formative and influential event in Charles Darwin’s life. Begun in 1831 and concluded towards the end of 1836, it transformed him from an amiable and somewhat aimless young man into an acknowledged expert in natural history and geology. It gave him an unrivalled opportunity to make scientific observations, to collect animals and plants and to travel through a succession of countries then little-known to European naturalists, and it convinced him that he should give up the idea of taking holy orders and that he was capable of joining the élite world of London science on an equal footing. Thereafter the expedition made him a scientific celebrity as he supervised the distribution and description of his specimens and produced several books and numerous articles about many of the things that he had seen. Moreover, and more famously, the intellectual currents set into motion by this voyage swirled through Darwin’s later life until, precipitated by Alfred Russel Wallace, they burst into Victorian drawing-rooms in 1859 in the form of On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.