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The evolution of honeycomb
Summary
Honeycombs are natural engineering marvels, using the least possible amount of wax to provide the greatest amount of storage space, with the greatest possible structural stability. Darwin recognised that explaining the evolution of the honey-bee’s comb…
Darwin in letters,1866: Survival of the fittest
Summary
The year 1866 began well for Charles Darwin, as his health, after several years of illness, was now considerably improved. In February, Darwin received a request from his publisher, John Murray, for a new edition of Origin. Darwin got the fourth…
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- … & what is delightful, I am able to write easy work for about 1½ hours every day’ ( letter to H. …
Jane Gray
Summary
Jane Loring Gray, the daughter of a Boston lawyer, married the Harvard botanist Asa Gray in 1848 and evidence suggests that she took an active interest in the scientific pursuits of her husband and his friends. Although she is only known to have…
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John Murray
Summary
Darwin's most famous book On the origin of species by means of natural selection (Origin) was published on 22 November 1859. The publisher was John Murray, who specialised in non-fiction, particularly politics, travel and science, and had published…
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- … Wallace to be read at the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, and Darwin began reworking …
Black Venus
Summary
Sadiah Qureshi (University of Birmingham) on the film Vénus Noire (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2010) Sara Baartman has long been characterised as ‘Black Venus’, or ‘Vénus Noire’. The epithet encapsulates how her exploitation and objectification whilst alive…
Darwin and dogs
Summary
Darwin was almost always in the company of dogs. Nina, Spark, Pincher, and Shiela. Snow, Dash, Bob, and Bran. The beloved terrier Polly (right). They were Darwin's constant companions at home and in the field, on walks and in sport, in his study and…
Darwin on marriage
Summary
On 11 November 1838 Darwin wrote in his journal ‘The day of days!’. He had proposed to his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and been accepted; they were married on 29 January 1839. Darwin appears to have written these two notes weighing up the pros and cons of…
Alfred Russel Wallace’s essay on varieties
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The original manuscript about varieties that Wallace composed on the island of Gilolo and sent to Darwin from the neighbouring island of Ternate (Brooks 1984) has not been found. It was sent to Darwin as an enclosure in a letter (itself missing), and was…
Abstract of Darwin’s theory
Summary
There are two extant versions of the abstract of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. One was sent to Asa Gray on 5 September 1857, enclosed with a letter of the same date (see Correspondence vol. 6, letter to Asa Gray, 5 September [1857] and enclosure).…
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- … Provenance: CUL DAR 6: 51 Notes 1 The printed version is headed: “Abstract of a …
The death of Anne Elizabeth Darwin
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Charles and Emma Darwin’s eldest daughter, Annie, died at the age of ten in 1851. Emma was heavily pregnant with their fifth son, Horace, at the time and could not go with Charles when he took Annie to Malvern to consult the hydrotherapist, Dr Gully.…
Florence Caroline Dixie
Summary
On October 29th 1880, Lady Florence Dixie wrote a letter to Charles Darwin from her home in the Scottish Borders; “Whilst reading the other day your very interesting account of A Naturalist’s Voyage round the world,” she said, “I came across a passage…of…
The origin of language
Summary
Darwin started thinking about the origin of language in the late 1830s. The subject formed part of his wide-ranging speculations about the transmutation of species. In his private notebooks, he reflected on the communicative powers of animals, their…
Scientific Networks
Summary
Friendship|Mentors|Class|Gender In its broadest sense, a scientific network is a set of connections between people, places, and things that channel the communication of knowledge, and that substantially determine both its intellectual form and content,…
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Moral Nature
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In Descent of Man, Darwin argued that human morality had evolved from the social instincts of animals, especially the bonds of sympathy and love. Darwin gathered observations over many decades on animal behavior: the heroic sacrifices of social insects,…
Clémence Auguste Royer
Summary
Getting Origin translated into French was harder than Darwin had expected. The first translator he approached, Madame Belloc, turned him down on the grounds that the content was ‘too scientific‘, and then in 1860 the French political exile Pierre…
Religion
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Design|Personal Belief|Beauty|The Church Perhaps the most notorious realm of controversy over evolution in Darwin's day was religion. The same can be said of the evolution controversy today; however the nature of the disputes and the manner in…
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Charles Darwin’s letters: a selection 1825-1859
Summary
The letters in this volume span the years from 1825, when Darwin was a student at the University of Edinburgh, to the end of 1859, when the Origin of Species was published. The early letters portray Darwin as a lively sixteen-year-old medical student. Two…
Instinct and the Evolution of Mind
Summary
Sources|Discussion Questions|Experiment Slave-making ants For Darwin, slave-making ants were a powerful example of the force of instinct. He used the case of the ant Formica sanguinea in the On the Origin of Species to show how instinct operates—how…
First of the barnacle books
Summary
After eight years of research, Darwin publishes Living Cirripedia vol 1, the first of four volumes classifying living and fossil barnacles
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- … of research, Darwin publishes Living Cirripedia vol 1, the first of four volumes classifying …
Species theory outlined
Summary
Darwin writes a 32-page outline of his ideas on species change, known as 'the pencil sketch'
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- … Darwin writes a 32-page outline of his ideas on species change, known as 'the pencil sketch' …
