RECORD: Darwin, C. R. n.d. Abstract of Hearne's Travels. CUL-DAR48.A8. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed by Christine Chua and John van Wyhe 9.2021. RN1
NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The volume CUL-DAR48 contains notes for Natural selection chap. 8 'Transitions of Organs'. Notes on bees' cells for origin of species theory.
Hearne, Samuel. 1795. A journey from Prince of Wales's Fort, in Hudson's Bay, to the Northern Ocean, etc. London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell.
This note informed the famous whale-bear passage in the first edition of Origin. Darwin received so much criticism for it that he later removed most of it.
"In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."
[A8]
Ch 8 = Hearne's Travels =
p. 370 The black bear catches fresh water insects by swimming with mouth open "like whales." These insects are in wonderful numbers. So that they are driven together into the bays of the lakes & the thickness of two or three feet & make dreadful smell. These insects of 2 kinds all the bears distended stomachs
Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
File last updated 18 November, 2023