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all Indians amongst these islands is a complete puzzle'. Darwin thought that the islands had originally been inhabited (partly because of the abundance of seals), but the people had been exterminated. The Beagle ran on to the northward, and on 7 January made rendezvous with those of the crew who had been surveying this part of the Chonos group at Low Harbour, a narrow inlet between Isla Gran Guaiteca and Isla Marta (43°49'S; 74°02'W). The Beagle encountered a group of Chilotans who had crossed
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13. New Zealand: Maoris and Missionaries The log of HM Surveying Sloop Beagle shows that she was within sight of the New Zealand coast in the early afternoon of 19 December 1835; the sky was blue, with a few white clouds, but there was a force 4 westerly breeze and progress was slow for the next couple of days. At one stage the ship was blown back eastwards many miles; later the vessel was becalmed at the mouth of the Bay of Islands. By late morning on 21 December, however, the Beagle was
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ship 'Made all sail on the port tack' and by 4.00 a.m. the Sydney Light, about eight miles distant, was visible. At 7.30 a.m. sails were trimmed and shortened for 'running for and into Port Jackson'. It was fine: a few clouds scattered over the summer sky, with a force 2 southerly breeze, but it was not until 1.30 p.m. that HMS Beagle came into Sydney Harbour and was moored '30 fathoms each way' (i.e. with cables going in two directions). HMS Zebra was at anchor close by, and it seems that she
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. Armstrong, 'HMS Beagle in Sydney, January 1836', History (February 1995): 15-17. 2. Diary, 16 January 1836, p. 377. 3. Ibid., p. 378. 4. Ibid., 17 January 1836, p. 380. 5. DAR31.8. 6. P. H. Armstrong, 'The Contrasting Views of Charles Robert Darwin and James Dwight Dana: An Early Problem in Australian Geology'', Journal of Australian Studies, 39 (1993): 55-64. In Darwin's defence it might be added that he did not have the opportunity of seeing these valleys in flood, during a wet season. 7. Diary
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me access to archives or specimens include: The Natural History Museum (London), the University Zoological Museum (Cambridge), the Public Record Office (Kew), which holds the Beagle log and other material relating to the voyage, Shrewsbury School, the Royal Naval Hydrographic Office (Taunton), the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia) and Yale University Library (New Haven). I thank also, with all my heart, my dear wife Moyra, who has had to live with Darwin, as well as a sometimes
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inevitably a feeling of being on hallowed ground and standing intellectually in Darwin's awesome and ever-present shadow.1 So wrote Frank Sulloway, a distinguished Darwin scholar.2 Darwin himself, in his Autobiography, recalled: During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed ... by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group; none of these islands
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that earthquakes were the primary cause of their formation. Here is part of his revised account, edited for publication in the Voyage of the Beagle: [I]t seems . . . probable that they [the fragments] have been hurled down from the nearest slopes; and that since, by a vibratory movement of overwhelming force, the fragments have been levelled into one continuous sheet. If during the earthquake which in 1835 overthrew Conception, in Chile, it was thought wonderful that small bodies should have been
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Fuegan Man must follow. The greater number of invertebrates would likewise perish, but how many it is hard to conjecture.25 A note on the back of the page refers to the '(a)' added in small handwriting to the text, perhaps when Darwin reviewed his work sometime later. It reads: 'I refer to numbers of individuals as well as kinds.' This description forms one of the most important passages in Darwin's notes from the Beagle voyage. It reveals how insightful Darwin had become in evaluating
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, clothes and personal adornment, and the children's songs are mentioned. They give no great detail, however, but one gets the impression that they thought that society had declined since the days of Captain Cook and before. There had been a good deal of European contact: both Darwin and FitzRoy describe the way in which Tahitian men swarmed aboard the Beagle, wanting to trade artefacts, shells - almost anything - for dollars. Beside a number of missionary families - of whom more anon - there
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apparently made-up word for dung-feeding. 17. Voyage, p. 471, footnote. 18. Zoology of the Voyage, Part 2, p. 36. 19. Ibid., pp. 36-7. 20. Darwin gives the height, in his diary, as 2,840 ft; he presumably obtained this figure from the naval surveyors on the Beagle, although he did carry an anaeroid; it is uncannily exact. Modern maps give the summit as 859 m (about 2,840 ft). 232 [page
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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Ornithologically the most fruitful was Darwin's visit to the Galapagos Islands, where no proper collection-based survey of birds had ever taken place before the Beagle crew came ashore. Twenty-two new (sub-)species were among the birds which Darwin brought back to Britain. They were all described immediately by John Gould, who also, as discussed in Sulloway (1982a, 1982b), was the first to recognize the close relationship among the Galapagos finches. Gould received Darwin's specimens on 4
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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with the Zoological Society for the donation of a specimen of the scale-throated earthcreeper Upucerthia dumetaria to the BMNH. The bird was subsequently given to the BMNH in early August 1839, and is now registered as BMNH 1839.8.4.1 (see Appendix). In total, about 34–39 skin specimens from the Beagle voyage were subsequently given by the Zoo-logical Society to the BMNH in 1839, 1841 and 1856, on Darwin's initiative, which got him entered into BMNH registers as a donor. It seems certain that the
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Introduction: The Origins of the Darwin Voyage, and an Overview One further incident should be recounted. In January 1830 Captain FitzRoy was surveying around the islets west of the main mass of Tierra del Fuego, attempting to explain the anomalies in his compass bearings. He formed the view that there might be magnetic rocks in some of the mountains of Tierra del Fuego, and regretted the fact that there was no one aboard the Beagle who knew much about geology or mineralogy. He resolved 'that
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the Beagle sailed from what Darwin called 'Crater Harbor, [sic]' but the ship was becalmed between Narborough and Albemarle Islands, and made her way slowly round the north of the latter. Darwin continued to study the coastline, noting that it remained 'studded with small craters', although there were some 'great Volcanic mounds' from which streams of black lava had flowed. The ship, having rounded the north point of Albemarle, seems to have been swept over 100 nautical miles back to the east
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Islands, Maoris and Australian Aboriginals, Africans and Malays - Darwin worked hard to be on open and friendly terms with all. He talked to as many of those with whom he came into contact as possible, and often gained valuable information from them. On the afternoon of 17 October HMS Beagle sent boats to take the group back on board; the hydrographic survey of the eastern side of Albemarle was then completed on the 18th: Darwin noticed that this coast of the island was 'nearly black with recent
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avalanche of enthusiasm for Tenerife in general and the dragon tree in particular (poor Ramsay had died by the end of August 1831), for, as Darwin himself later put it, the scheme was 'knocked on the head by the voyage of the Beagle'; for after his brief geological walk through North Wales with Sedgwick the letter from Henslow containing the suggestion that he join Captain FitzRoy's voyage awaited him. But it was as if a trigger had been pulled. Had it not been for the 'reading and rereading' of
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The Islands That Never Were later the Beagle 'passed within a few miles of the Piton rock, the most Southern of the Salvages: it is a wild abrupt rock c uninhabited'. The ship was excluded from Tenerife, the visit which he had been so long planning, and Gran Canaria also had to be viewed from afar. He might well have wondered when he really was going to set foot on an island! There is one other incident that may have contributed to this frustration, and although it is noted in just a couple of
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species of gannet; the noddies are terns.4 He noted in his diary that 'these with a few insects were the only organized beings that inhabited this desolate spot'. He obviously made a much more detailed study of the life-forms of the island than these superficial notes imply. He expands in the Voyage of the Beagle, to what amounts to an almost complete inventory of the island's biota. Like many scientists since, he perhaps found that the inherent simplicity of an island's ecosystem aided study
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. Trivial annotations in themselves, but they are the precursors of ideas that were later of great importance in Darwin's work. But there was still more. The passage that follows comes immediately after the account of the rocky islet biota in the Voyage of the Beagle: The often repeated description of the stately palm and other noble tropical plants, then birds, and lastly man, taking possession of the coral islets as soon as formed, in the Pacific, is probably not quite correct; I fear it destroys
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The Smallest Rocks in the Tropical Seas On the evening of 18 February he recollected: At last I am certainly in the Southern hemisphere, whilst enjoying the cool air of the evening I can gaze at the Southern Cross, Magellan's cloud the great crown of the South. In August quietly wandering about Wales: in February in a different hemisphere; nothing ever in this life ought to surprise me.13 One day later, at about the same time of the evening, the Beagle hove to within sight of Fernando Noronha
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brief landing on the eastern end of Stuart Island (Isla Stewart); they were at this point 150 miles from the ship. The pair of boats returned via the southern arm of the Beagle Channel (i.e. to the south of the Isla Gordon). Although the weather was poor, the voyage was uneventful. On about 4 February they met a large party of Fuegians, and with 'old buttons bits of red cloth', Darwin recounts, 'we purchased an excellent supper of fish'. On 6 February they arrived back at Woollya, the missionary
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Darwin's Other Islands The East coast from the St of Magellan ... to St Polycarp's Bay, is formed of horizontal tertiary strata, bounded some way towards the interior by a mountainous band of clay slate. This great clay-slate formation extends from St Le Mairie [sic] westward for 140 miles, along both sides of the Beagle channel to near its bifurcation. South of this channel it forms all of Navarin Island, and the eastern half of Hoste Island and of Hardy peninsula; north of the Beagle channel
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behaved in a fairly lawless manner. Captain Robert FitzRoy tried to sort things out as best he could, but he had other matters to attend to, in particular the making of a detailed hydrographic survey of the Sound and adjoining waters. On 4 March - the day after arrival - FitzRoy's clerk drowned, apparently becoming entangled in kelp (the long fronds of seaweed that flourish in the waters around the islands) while recovering a bird specimen that had been shot. The log of the Beagle records that at
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, and catching him seems to have been anything but easy, even if he did eventually surrender. The desperados were brought on board the Beagle, some of them in irons, and were eventually transported to England. Because of legal difficulties, however (arising about uncertainty over the sovereignty of the islands when the murders were committed), they were never convicted. Later in the visit the body of a Lieutenant Clive, who had been drowned some three months before during the visit of the
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Darwin's Other Islands walk up behind it. He killed the creature with his geological hammer. George Waterhouse who later studied the mammals that Darwin collected on the Beagle voyage identified the rather small, dark brown, almost black, animal as Canis fulcipes. Modern scientific thought places the organism in the genus Dusicyon along with a number of other South American canids, including the extinct Falklands fox or wolf {Dusicyon australis), all of which had a reputation for tameness and
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Darwin's Other Islands it, and crossed it in two directions. He might have added that he had seen it in all its moods, winter and summer, under bright sunlight and under heavy, continuing rain. It was one of the most thorough island surveys that he undertook during the Beagle voyage. Let us now consider the fruits of this survey, and the results of his many-faceted observations. One of the most important accomplishments might at first appear of little significance. We have seen that the young
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flirtations with the notion of gradualism. The Beagle had not yet crossed what is now known as the International Date Line (Longitude 180°, East and West), but Tahiti seems to have taken its time from the West rather than the East and Darwin's diary entries show some signs of confusion. In an entry under the heading 'Sunday 15th [November 1835]' he wrote: 'This was our Sunday but their Monday.' The next entry he headed 'Tuesday November 17th', and then deleted the date. He then wrote: 'This day is
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Darwin's Other Islands Beagle contributed towards the building of a church: 'the missionaries', thought Darwin, had 'fixed on this spot, to attack vice in her very Citadel'. The wood-built church, Christ Church, still exists: it is the oldest church in New Zealand. Darwin was invited by one of the missionaries to visit Waimate, a missionary settlement about fifteen miles (24 km) inland. Two days before Christmas he set off with a Maori guide. James Busby gave them a lift by boat to 'a pretty
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New Zealand: Maoris and Missionaries The next day, being Sunday, divine service was again held aboard the Beagle, and probably Darwin attended. He seems to have spent the afternoon writing letters, for one of the whaling ships was about to leave for England. The only letter surviving from this batch seems to be one to his sister Caroline, in which he describes writing it on a 'rainy Sunday evening'; it is full of grumbles about seasickness and hankerings for the end of the voyage.5 The log
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Australia: The Great Princess of the South his religious outlook and adopted an evolutionary point of view. However, the evidence for this is not strong; as we have seen, he was writing from a strongly Christian viewpoint just a few weeks earlier, in Tahiti and New Zealand (see pp. 145 and 165). Although here and there in the notes from the Beagle period there are vague hints that the idea of mutability of species went though his mind, all the evidence suggests that it was not until after his
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bloodthirsty villain.20 At 10.30 a.m. on 30 January the anchor was weighed, and the ship 'made all sail to the top gallant sails', tacking 'as requisite, working out of Port Jackson'. By 7.00 p.m. they were abeam of Point Perpendicular. They were bound for Hobart Town, in Tasmania (see Chapter 15), but before we follow Darwin to the 'Apple Isle', let us briefly compare his experiences in New South Wales with those at his second landfall on the Australian mainland. HMS Beagle, at 1.00 p.m. on 6 March
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Tasmania: A Geological Laboratory robberies, burnings and murders. Darwin understood very clearly, however, where the blame lay: 'I fear there is no doubt that this train of evil and its consequences, originated in the infamous conduct of some of our own countrymen.'6 Darwin had no personal experience of the Tasmanian Aborigines, but seems to have made careful enquiries about their fate, both while on the island and subsequently. In the Voyage of the Beagle he describes the pathetic way in
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numbers of his geological specimens is to be found: '3581 A piece of a well rounded boulder of compact greenstone [dolerite] found in the coral breccia of the Northern Isd: in possession of Capt. Ross.' The 'Northern Island' would be North Keeling, seen from the deck of the Beagle by Darwin but not landed on. The diary is silent on this strange lump of igneous rock, brought back to Home Island by Ross. (As Captain Ross was not present during the Beagle's visit one must assume that the 'piece' was
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Darwin's Other Islands 'unpleasant' appearance; the central uplands of the island were 'desolate'. He was anxious to be home. FitzRoy did not usually enter the noon position of the Beagle into the log himself; it was generally inked in by his clerk or one of the others aboard the ship, but the commander carefully checked the entries and countersigned the completed pages with something of a flourish.2 It can be assumed that he carefully checked the entries for noon, 18 September 1836; his ship
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emergence: along large parts of the coast of southern Australia, he felt, the sea had formerly 'stood higher'. The theory of coral atolls, originally sketched out while aboard the Beagle, was put before the Geological Society of London on 31 May 1837 and published the following year.1 The ideas were much expanded in the Coral Reefs volume of the Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle. Thus in notebook, draft, letter and publication the development of the idea, in fits and starts, perhaps, and, by
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growth, following Darwin's reading of the Essay on Population after his return to England (in about September 1838), for the jigsaw to be put together into the theory of natural selection. Running through much of the corpus of Darwin's writing from the Beagle days onwards is the idea of the existence of a dialogue between an organism and its environment. Reading William Paley's Natural Theology as an undergraduate had taught Darwin to look for the intricacy with which a plant or a creature was
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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this study when he came to the Natural History Museum in 1998 to see the bird skins of his great-grandfather for his forthcoming book Charles Darwin's Zoology Notes Specimen Lists from H.M.S. Beagle (Keynes 2000). Robert Prys-Jones (Head of Bird 48Other ornithological examples in On the Origin of Species (Darwin 1872) are a discussion onbird races versus species with the example of the red grouse of Britain being perhaps a subspecies of the willow grouse (p. 69), survival rates of eggs and
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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actually know much more about Darwin and his bird collection, other than those from the Gal pagos Islands. Nobody has ever comprehensively listed, for example, which birds Darwin collected or encountered during the voyage of the Beagle . There are several explanations for this. One is the subsequent dispersal of Darwin's bird collection. When Darwin was still out in South America, he would send back bird specimens to Prof. John Stevens Henslow at Cambridge, who was paid by Charles' father, Dr
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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this study when he came to the Natural History Museum in 1998 to see the bird skins of his great-grandfather for his forthcoming book Charles Darwin's Zoology Notes Specimen Lists from H.M.S. Beagle (Keynes 2000). Robert Pr s-Jones (Head of Bird Group, Natural History Museum, Tring) kindly forwarded Richard's interesting request to me, giving me the opportunity to research and data-base all known Beagle birds, in close cooperation with Richard Keynes and his notebook transcripts. Many thanks also
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, another useful staging post, was acquired from the French in 1810. And so on. Between 1783 and 1870, by conquest, settlement and treaty, there was a period of almost uninterrupted expansion, and with this expansion came trade; with international trade came the need for accurate charts. Thus it was, in early August of 1828, HMS Beagle, along with the Adventure and a small vessel purchased to assist with hydrographic survey, [page
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remote islands, run through the entire corpus of Darwin's writings from the Beagle period and through the thinking that gave rise to them. The twin themes are interconnected. Darwin was fortunate enough to visit some 40 islands, possibly more (in a very few cases it is difficult from his notes and other documents that survive from the voyage to be absolutely sure whether he landed on a particular islet or simply viewed it from offshore), and it is perhaps unsurprising that he often compared them
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6. The Smallest Rocks in the Tropical Seas: St Paul's Rocks and Fernando Noronha Captain FitzRoy's navigation was exemplary, and a week after leaving the Cape Verde Islands - a week that Darwin had spent relaxing and working on his collections of marine life - late on 15 February 1832, the ship's company of the Beagle 'saw the rocks of St Paul's right ahead'. The vessel hove to for the night. On the 16th they moved a little closer, and when three miles distant boats were lowered: one with a
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there is the bald annotation 'geld bull'; in the diary, which he envisaged being read by others, including his unmarried sisters, the gauchos 'render him innocuous'. In the Voyage of the Beagle, perhaps because this might not be clear, the phrase becomes 'emasculate him and render him for the future harmless'. Thus there was much about each visit that was inauspicious. Nonetheless, despite the 'complicated scenes' of foul weather, shipwreck, brutal murder and drowning that Darwin experienced, or
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the swell as they came nearer to the open waters close to the southern tip of the island, good time was made, and by the evening of 8 December they reached the island of San Pedro at the southeastern extremity of Chiloe; the Beagle was there to meet them. Darwin continues that 'while doubling the point of the harbor [sic]1 - probably Punta Plutipoye - he and a couple of other officers landed 'to take a round of angles', or make a series of survey observations. A 'fox' watched them for awhile; it
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information Darwin gleaned from a Mr Douglas, long resident on the island, an experienced surveyor and temporarily employed by the Beagle as a pilot and guide. 29. The informant was Mr Douglas (see note above). Diary, 27-28 November 1834, p. 253. 30. Colonial Chile was part of the viceroyalty of Peru. 31. Geology of the Voyage, Part 3, p. 123. 32. Ibid., p. 120. 33. Pholadidae, the piddock family, rock-boring molluscs. 34. Geology of the Voyage, Part 3, pp. 27-8. 35. My own careful study of the shore
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also by the possibility that Darwin stood here on this lonely tropical beach pondering his coral atoll theory, which was by this time well formed in his mind. Even when FitzRoy, Darwin and their crew returned to the boat and cast off again into the lagoon, they did not hurry back to the Beagle: We did not return on board till late in the evening, for we staid a long time in the lagoon, examining fields of coral and the gigantic shells of Chama, into which, if a man were to put his hand, he would
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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, 1837c, 1837d, 1837e, 1837f, 1838), while Darwin added some comments dur-ing two of these meetings (Darwin 1837a, 1837b). Eyton compiled the anatomical appendix for the Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (Gould et al. 1841), but also used some data gathered by Darwin in his Synopsis on the Anatidae (Eyton 1869, pp. 29, 31–32). John Gould later summarized the ornithological knowledge which had been accumulated by Darwin during his journey in part 3 (Birds) of the Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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1839 and 1841 donations of at least nine birds were mainly triggered by Darwin asking George Robert Gray of the BMNH for help in finishing the bird chapters of the Zoology of H.M.S. Beagle (Gould and Darwin 1838, p. IX). Gray re-classified three of these birds for the book. In 1855, the Zoological Society Museum was broken up. The BMNH had the first choice of specimens. George Robert Gray, then the assistant curator of zoology, was entrusted with the selection of important material for the
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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, 1837d, 1837e, 1837f, 1838), while Darwin added some comments during two of these meetings (Darwin 1837a, 1837b). Eyton compiled the anatomical appendix for the Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (Gould et al. 1841), but also used some data gathered by Darwin in his Synopsis on the Anatidae (Eyton 1869, pp. 29, 31 32). John Gould later summarized the ornithological knowledge which had been accumulated by Darwin during his journey in part 3 (Birds) of the Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle
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A161
Periodical contribution:
Steinheimer, F. D. 2004. Charles Darwin's bird collection and ornithological knowledge during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-1836. Journal of Ornithology 145(4): 300-320, 4 figures (appendix [pp. 1-40]).
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collection of small series33 of the same species was actually inspired by his intense nterest in biogeography and geographic variation. Darwin may often have been thwarted, though, by the space problem in the tiny cabins and store rooms of H.M.S. Beagle ,34 which probably did not permit constant access to his collection when he wanted to make comparisons. Obviously, contemporary field collectors of the likes of Alcide Dessalines d'Orbingy in 1826 1833 and the early Alfred Russel Wallace in 1848
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