Posts Tagged ‘Galápagos Islands’

Last impressions can be quite different from first impressions. Take Darwin’s first and last impression of the Galapagós Islands as an example.

Initially, the islands were far from fascinating: “Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissures, is everywhere covered by stunted, sunburnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life.”

After 35 days on the island, however, Darwin gathered a range of specimens. The collection of specimens included tortoises, some weighing up to 500 pounds; iguanas—and the finches “mingled together.”

With surveying nearing completion and Captain FitzRoy ready to set sail, Darwin’s time on the islands was running out. Lamenting the brief stay, Darwin wrote a consolatory perspective: “It is the fate of every voyager, when he has just discovered what object in any place is more particularly worthy of his attention, to be hurried from it.”

Wondering—what impression Darwin would have on his theory of evolution today?

On the Beagle voyage, Darwin recorded events in a series of notebooks. Darwin was on the Galapagos Islands from September 16 through October 20, 1835 and recorded these events in a red field notebook now entitled EH1.17 on pages 18B through 50B. Darwin’s notebooks are available on-line at http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/.

 The data Darwin documented on the finches in the Galapagos Islands is remarkable in that Darwin refers to “beaks” only once on page 34B (see illustration, line 5) and to “finches” only once on page 43B –

 “Small Finc[h] picking from same piece after alights on back”

Not only will the notebook not win a prize for scientific excellence for studying finch beaks, neither will Darwin’s collection of finches from the different islands because the birds from the different islands were mixed together. Darwin never documented any sequential change in beak sizes in the birds collected from the different islands, and acknowledged in his autobiography -

“Unfortunately most of the specimens of the finch tribe were mingled together.”

Darwin’s notebook was eventually transcribed from microfilm by Gordon Chancellor and the transcription was typed and checked against microfilm by Kees Rookmaaker in 2006.

The current whereabouts of Darwin’s EH1.17 notebook is unknown. The notebook was part of the Darwin Collection at Down House and was microfilmed by Cambridge University Library (and sold by Micromethods) in 1969. The notebook has since been missing and was presumably stolen around 1983, or shortly before, and is now registered as stolen property.

While further investigation of the notebook is no longer possible, Darwin’s evidence for the evolution of the finch beak was simply a re-construction based on the emerging theory of evolution by John Gould back in England long after Darwin set-sail from the Galapagos Island in October 1835.

Now, reference to Darwin’s finches should be for historical purposes, and not as evidence for evolution.

Darwin

February 12, 1809, on the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin, Darwin was born into aristocracy at the Mount. Since Darwin’s mother died when he was only eight years old, his father sent him to Butler’s boarding school. By his own admission, Darwin considered himself a “below average” student.

 Then at the age of sixteen, Darwin started college at Edinburgh University to become a physician, because that is what his father wanted him to do. But Darwin was repulsed but what he saw. Transferring to Christ’s College at University of Cambridge to become a minister, Darwin developed life-long associations with Professors Henslow and Sedgwick.

 After receiving an offer of a lifetime after graduation following Henslow’s recommendation, Darwain joined the HMS Beagle as a volunteer naturalist. Leaving Plymouth, England in December 1831, the Canary Islands were the first to be explored and while nearly “utterly homesick,” the thirty-five days on Galápagos Islands cumlinated the voyage. While it was Captain FitzRoy Legacy gave Darwin the opportunity of a lifetime, he later deeply regreted the decision, eventually committing suicide.

 Impressions from the voyage eventually paved the way for the publication of The Origin of Species, more than 20 years later. In 1882, in the area of Westminster Abbey known as Scientists’ Corner, Darwin was laid a few feet from the burial place of Sir Isaac Newton and next to that of the astronomer Sir John Herschel.