A86    Periodical contribution:     Sulloway, Frank J. 1982. The Beagle collections of Darwin's finches (Geospizinae). Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Zoology Series 43, no. 2: 49-94.   Text   Image   PDF

History) and the Leiden Rijksmuseum, or as having been lost or destroyed since 183784. Similarly, of the 25 to 27 specimens procured by other Beagle collectors, all but 2, both of which were among the 13 FitzRoy specimens that went to the British Museum in 1837, appear to have survived. Acknowledgments I thank the following persons and institutions for their assistance in connection with this publication. C. W. Benson; the British Museum (Natural History), Sub-department of Ornithology, Tring

A86    Periodical contribution:     Sulloway, Frank J. 1982. The Beagle collections of Darwin's finches (Geospizinae). Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Zoology Series 43, no. 2: 49-94.   Text   Image   PDF

-department of Ornithology, Tring. FitzRoy presented one further specimen on 15 March 1837, an egg of Rhea darwinii. FitzRoy's Galapagos portion of the collection included 50 skins, 21 of them finches, all with an island locality. Some of these Galapagos specimens belonged to another shipmate, however; and only 24 Galapagos skins, 13 of them finches, actually went to the British Museum. 21. See DAR 29.3 : 26, 28-30. Ironically, that other shipmates on the Beagle, but not Darwin, recorded island

A303    Book:     Freeman, R. B. 1984. Darwin Pedigrees. London: printed for the author.   Text   Image   PDF

seldom if ever used. There are no Darwins in this category, no peers, no bishops, but there are a few people who occur in Darwin literature whose names do change in this way. These have been given in a second list. Abbety — A nickname given by Bernard Richard Meirion Darwin, in childhood, to some member of the family at Down House. Alderman, The — Aaron Wedgwood, 1722-1768, from his pomposity. Alex — Alexander Charles Wood, 1810-? by Robert FitzRoy. Allen — John Allen Wedgwood, 1796-1882. Ape — Carlo

A303    Book:     Freeman, R. B. 1984. Darwin Pedigrees. London: printed for the author.   Text   Image   PDF

Finlay, Sophia Harriet, see Moilliet Fisher, Florence, see Darwin FitzRoy, Robert, FRS 1851, 1805-1865 43, 45 Fletcher, Harriet, see Fox Foley, Elizabeth, née Turton, fl. 1708 32 Foley, Paul, fl. 1708 32 Foley, Penelope, née Paget, fl. 1670 31, 32 Foley, Philip, 1653-? 32 Forsyth, Ann, née Noel, 1853-1887 14 Forsyth, Thomas Hamilton, m. 1873 14 Fox, Agnes Jane, 1849-? 15 Fox, Ann, née Darwin, 1777-1859 15 Fox, Ann, see Darwin Fox, Charles Wood, 1847-? 16 Fox, Edith Darwin, 1857-? 16 Fox, Eliza

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

Figure 2 Captain FitzRoy Commander of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. (Photograph: Mitchell Library, Sydney) [page]

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

Figure 20 Exposure of calcareous sandstone in the flanks of Bald Head, possibly that visited by Darwin and FitzRoy. (Photograph: Patrick Armstrong) Figure 21 'Peculiar calcareous cylindrical projections, which originally were mistaken for coral , occur all over the promontory of Bald Head.' Today these would be described as rhizoconcretions. (Photograph: Patrick Armstrong) [page] 4

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

Figure 8 Some place names of the King George's Sound area. casteaux, Freycinet, Flinders,35 who have all mentioned with various opinions the singularly formed calcareous bodies lying on the ground. I went in the company of Capt. FitzRoy as we perfectly coincided in opinion the following may be considered our joint observation on this disputed subject A little later he is careful to record that 'Capt. FitzRoy discovered a species of Helix and the case of an Oniscus'. A full account of the Bald

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

Captain FitzRoy goes on to give a brief, somewhat critical, account of the landscape as seen from the anchorage, beginning the following paragraph: 'Next day, however, we found that ' The meteorological record shows the location of the Beagle at 10.00 a.m. on March 6 as 'King George's Sound, the winds variable the weather squally '. These accounts can be reconciled by assuming that although the ship came within sight of the Sound about mid-morning on the 6th, for some hours progress was slow

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

pieces with use, much of it probably during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. He also had the writings of Humboldt and King. Captain FitzRoy had with him a copy of Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis, and made use of it frequently: in his Narrative FitzRoy records his debt to the pioneer hydrographer from Lincolnshire: [page] 1

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

been less than about 3km (approximately 1.8 miles) by ship's boat. (Fig. 8 shows some of the place names of the King George's Sound area.) These notes on the 'promontory' are separated from the succeeding set of observations, those on Bald Head and its petrified trees, by a firm line across the page: possibly the former represent a morning execution, the latter an afternoon trip. Darwin goes out of his way to say that Captain FitzRoy accompanied him on his investigation, 32 possibly because this

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

been tastefully furnished with nineteenth century furniture by the National Trust of Western Australia who now own the property. The atmosphere is unequivocably English, and the cottage and garden stand in poignant contrast to the rounded granite boulders and eucalypts that form their backdrop on the northern side. One feels that the essential aura of the place has not changed so very greatly since Darwin and FitzRoy called on the Government Resident in 1836. There was another interesting event

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

The Beagle in fact sailed from Port Jackson on 30 January 1836, at the height of the southern hemisphere summer, and thus, quite correctly, Captain FitzRoy took the southerly route. However, the actual course taken by the ship was something of a compromise, for the Swan River was not visited (what would Darwin's comments have been upon Perth and Fremantle, I wonder?), yet the Beagle did put in to the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Darwin's ideas on coral reefs and atolls were just developing, and a

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

possibly they were written up the day the observations were made. 7. These pencil notes are apparently dated '9th', presumably Wednesday 9 March 1836. The roughly written-up account of one day's observations seems thus to have been used as a note-pad the following day! 8. Captain FitzRoy in his account: Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle, 1826-1836 , Henry Colburn, London, 1839, noted: Considering the limited disposable space in so very small a ship

F3704    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text   PDF

The Beagle in fact sailed from Port Jackson on 30 January 1836, at the height of the southern hemisphere summer, and thus, quite correctly, Captain FitzRoy took the southerly route. However, the actual course taken by the ship was something of a compromise, for the Swan River was not visited (what would Darwin's comments have been upon Perth and Fremantle, I wonder?), yet the Beagle did put in to the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Darwin's ideas on coral reefs and atolls were just developing, and a

F3704    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text   PDF

possibly they were written up the day the observations were made. 7. These pencil notes are apparently dated '9th', presumably Wednesday 9 March 1836. The roughly written-up account of one day's observations seems thus to have been used as a note-pad the following day! 8. Captain FitzRoy in his account: Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle, 1826-1836 , Henry Colburn, London, 1839, noted: Considering the limited disposable space in so very small a ship

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

We may in addition note that the possible association between Kind George's Sound and coral features must have been in Darwin's mind before he even went ashore: in the Voyage of the Beagle he relates how he accompanied Captain FitzRoy of Bald Head, 'the place mentioned by so many navigators, where some imagined they saw corals, and others petrified trees.' Darwin had evidently been doing the background reading necessary before the fieldwork commenced! Howard Gruber has suggested that during

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

to write up his notes into a more formally complete form when he had a little leisure, probably in his cabin on H.M.S. Beagle while the ship was sailing from one port to another. He often combined his observations and speculations with those of earlier explorers and other scientists, for, contrary to what is sometimes supposed. Darwin and Captain FitzRoy (Fig. 2), Commander of the Beagle, with whom he shared a cabin, had at their disposal a substantial library of reference works, and this was

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

-nor'-west. By 6.00 p.m. this had grown to a 'moderate gale', Force 7. The very detailed statistical appendices to Captain FitzRoy's Narrative show that magnetic observations were made on March 10, again by Lt. Sullivan. FitzRoy noted: There is an extraordinary degree of local magnetic attraction about this place. We could not ascertain the amount of variation with any degree of accuracy until our compasses were placed upon a sandy beach of considerable extent,38 near the sea. Wherever there was

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect; I leave your shore without sorrow or regret. (Voyage) Whatever one feels about Charles' lack of affection for Australia in general and Western Australia in particular, one cannot but admire the remarkable prescience of some of his remarks! Although therefore, Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle account of this small corner of Western Australia was brief, by comparing it with the observations of Captain FitzRoy, and supplementing it

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

, 22, 34, 43 fish, 9, 27, 38, 59, 74 Fitzroy, Captain, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 26, 29, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 69, 73, 74, 75, 77 Flinders, Captain, 10, 13, 22, 23, 70 Flinders Peninsula, 23, 49 fossils, 4, 8, 10, 30, 41, 47-9, 57, 77 Freycient, 23 Galapagos Islands, 4, 11, 30, 52, 53, 54, 60-1, 64, 65, 71, 74 geological observations, 6, 20-6, 33-6, 41-9, 50, 56, 62, 68-9 gneiss, 23, 36, 35, 68, 75 granite, 22, 26, 34, 35, 36, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 68, 69, 70, 75, 76 grass

F3704    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text   PDF

the 1839 publication of the Voyage. Darwin's published descriptions of the Sound are excellently complemented by Captain FitzRoy's annotations on the locality.23 The latter are of course written in the style of the naval man that FitzRoy was, rater than that of a scientist, but they are valuable in that they in some instances provide information on matters upon which Darwin is silent. For example, included in the Captain's Narrative are detailed meteorological observations. Captain FitzRoy's

F3704    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text   PDF

full account of which is given in the section immediately following. Suffice it to say here that the organism mentioned is almost certainly the blue-green alga Trichodesmium, which occurs quite frequently in cool tropical and warm temperate Indian Ocean waters. Strands a few metres wide but several kilometers in length have been noted in the waters off south-western Australia. From this point Captain FitzRoy took a course almost due north-west to the Cocos Islands, and Charles Darwin lost sight of

F3704    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text   PDF

Narrative of a Survey of Inter-tropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed Between the Years 1818 and 1822 (London 1827), a copy of which was also in the cabin of the Beagle, and used frequently by Darwin and Captain FitzRoy For example in the Geological Diary (DAR. 38.1/867) Darwin compares a fine-grained, ferruginous sandstone encountered at King George's Sound with one described by Dr Fritton. The first part of page 8 of the notebook reads: In Dampier's voyage there is a mine of meteorology

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

. (Compare Darwin's descriptions of the King George's Sound Aborigines with the illustrations in Figs 5 and 6.) Captain FitzRoy was also extremely interested in the Aboriginals and their customs and appearance. He devotes a good deal of space in his Narrative to a description of them, although he seems to have enjoyed the corroboree rather less than his young scientist colleague: About two hours after dark the affair began. Nearly all the settlers and their visitors, had assembled on a level

A587    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1985. Charles Darwin in Western Australia: A young scientist's perception of an environment. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.   Text

progressive than the conservative Captain FitzRoy who could not conceal his unease at being present at a corroboree 'with a hundred armed natives', and who described the occasion as 'a fiendish sight almost too disagreeable to be interesting' (see p. 18). Darwin also tries to be reasonably objective in his evaluation of the white colonists and their activities: Certainly I formed a low opinion of the place; it must, however, be remembered that only from two to three years have elapsed since its