Charles Darwin

by Andrew Norman

  Encouraged by Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society, Wallace embarked, in early 1854 aboard the brig Frolic on another expedition, this time to the Far East.

  It was at Sarawak, a state of the Island of Borneo, where Wallace was located from November 1854 until February 1856, that, in his words,

  I wrote an article which formed my first contribution to the question of the origin of species. I sent it to The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, in which it appeared in the following September (1855). Its title was ‘On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species,’ which law was briefly stated … as follows: ‘Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely-allied species’ This clearly pointed to some kind of evolution. It suggested the when and the where of its occurrence, and that it could only be through natural generation, as was also suggested in the Vestiges; but the how was still a secret only to be penetrated some years later.22

  Darwin told Hooker on 9 May 1856 that ‘I had [a] good talk with Lyell about my species work, & he urges me strongly to publish something’.23 Lyell clearly believed that, if Darwin prevaricated, then there was a real danger that he would be pre-empted and someone else would claim the credit for his great discovery of evolution by natural selection. Darwin took Lyell’s advice, to ‘write out my views [on the subject of evolution] pretty fully, and I began at once to do so …’.24

  Wallace wrote to Darwin on 10 October, and expressed surprise at the lack of interest in his paper.25 To this, Darwin replied,

  You say that you have been somewhat surprised at no notice having been taken of your paper [referred to above] in the Annals: I cannot say that I am; for so very few naturalists care for anything beyond the mere description of species.26

  Darwin wrote graciously to Wallace on 1 May 1857 to say ‘I agree to the truth of almost every word of your paper …’,27 whereupon the latter was ‘much gratified’.28 As Darwin states in his autobiography, this was not the last that he was to hear of Wallace.

  Early in the summer of 1858 Mr Wallace, who was then in the Malay archipelago, sent me an essay On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type; and this essay contained exactly the same theory as mine. Mr Wallace expressed the wish that if I thought well of his essay, I should send it to Lyell for perusal.29

  On 18 June 1858 Darwin did as he was bid and forwarded Wallace’s ‘essay’ to Lyell. He also admitted to Lyell that his (Lyell’s) earlier warnings to him about the possible appearance of a rival had been fully justified.

  Some year or so ago, you recommended me to read a paper by [A. R.] Wallace in the Annals … . He has to day sent me the enclosed [i.e. the ‘essay’ referred to above] & asked me to forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd be forestalled … . I never saw a more striking coincidence, if Wallace had [been in possession of] my MS sketch written out in 1842 he could have not have made a better short abstract!30

  How Wallace arrived at the same conclusions as Darwin

  Referring to the great question of the origin of present-day species, Wallace declared:

  My (1st) paper written at Sarawak rendered it certain to my mind that the change had taken place by natural succession and descent – one species becoming changed either slowly or rapidly into another. But the exact process of the change and the causes which led to it were absolutely unknown and appeared to be almost inconceivable.31

  Wallace described how, when he wrote this paper, he was

  suffering from a sharp attack of intermittent fever, and every day during the cold and succeeding hot fits had to lie down for several hours, during which time I had nothing to do but to think over any subjects then particularly interesting me. One day something brought to my recollection Malthus’s Principles of Population, which I had read about twelve years before. I thought of his clear exposition of ‘the positive checks to increase [i.e. of population]’ — disease, accidents, war, and famine — which keep down the population of savage races to so much lower an average than that of more civilized peoples. It then occurred to me that these causes [i.e. ‘checks’] or their equivalents are continually acting in the case of animals also …32

  Malthus, it will be remembered, was the very same person who had inspired Darwin. Wallace then posed the crucial question, ‘Why do some die and some live? And the answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live’ or, in other words,

  the most healthy … the strongest, the swiftest … the most cunning … the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain — that is, the fittest would survive.33

  Having, in this eureka moment, ‘solved the problem of the origin of species’, said Wallace,

  For the next hour I thought over the deficiencies in the theories of Lamarck and of the author of the Vestiges, and I saw that my new theory supplemented these views and obviated every important difficulty. I waited anxiously for the termination of my fit [of fever] so that I might at once make notes for a paper on the subject. The same evening I did this pretty fully, and on the two succeeding evenings wrote it out carefully in order to send it to Darwin by the next post …34

  Darwin told Lyell on 25 June that he feared that Wallace might accuse him [Darwin] of plagiarism. Said he, ‘I could send Wallace a copy of my letter to Asa Gray to show him that I had not stolen his doctrine.’35 This was a reference by Darwin to his letter to Asa Gray of 20 July 1857, previously referred to, and in which was included an ‘Enclosure’, in which he explained his views on the subject of Natural Selection in great detail.

  The outcome was that a gentlemen’s agreement was reached, whereby Hooker and Lyell would forward papers containing ‘the results of the investigations of two indefatigable naturalists, Mr Charles Darwin and Mr Alfred Wallace’, to the Linnaean Society, This they did on 30 June 1858, together with a letter, which read as follows:

  These gentlemen having, independently and unknown to one another, conceived the same very ingenious theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of varieties and of specific forms on our planet, may both fairly claim the merit of being original thinkers in this important line of inquiry; but neither of them having published his views, though Mr Darwin has for many years past been urged by us to do so, and both authors having now unreservedly placed their papers in our hands, we think it would best promote the interests of science that a selection from them should be laid before the Linnaean Society.

  The ‘papers’ included Wallace’s essay entitled ‘On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type’, and

  Extracts from a MS [Manuscript] work on Species, by Mr Darwin, which was sketched in 1839, and copied in 1844, when the copy was read by Dr Hooker, and its contents afterwards communicated to Sir Charles Lyell [together with] an abstract of a private letter addressed to Professor Asa Gray, of Boston, U.S., in October 1857, by Mr Darwin, in which he repeats his views, and which shows that these remained unaltered from 1839 to 1857.36

  In other words Darwin had first formulated his theory no less than nineteen years previously!

  Finally, at a meeting of the Linnaean Society held on 1 July 1858, Darwin’s and Wallace’s communications were read out (in their absence).37

  To Hooker, on 13 July 1858, Darwin, as ever modest and self-effacing to a fault, wrote:

  I always thought it very possible that I might be forestalled, but I fancied that I had [a] grand enough soul not to care; but I found myself mistaken & punished; I had, however, quite resigned myself & had written half a letter to Wallace to give up all priority to him & shd certainly not have changed [my mind] had it not been for Lyell’s & yours quite extraordinary kindness.38

  Finally, the following month, Wallace
’s ‘Essay’, together with an ‘Abstract’ from Darwin’s manuscript, were published in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society.39 However, said a disappointed Darwin, ‘our joint productions excited very little attention …’.40 Nevertheless, ‘In September 1858, I set to work by the strong advice of Lyell and Hooker to prepare [for publication] a volume on the transmutation of species … .’41

  Darwin told Wallace in April 1859:

  You are right, that I came to the conclusion that Selection was the principle of change from [a] study of domesticated productions; & then reading Malthus I saw at once how to apply the principle. Geographical Distrib. & Geological relations of extinct to recent inhabitants of S. America first led me to [the] subject. Especially [in the] case of Galapagos Islds.

  I forget whether I told you that Hooker, who is our best British Botanist & perhaps best in [the] World, is a full convert, & is now going immediately to publish his confession of Faith [i.e. in Darwin’s theory of natural selection] … . Huxley is changed & believes in mutation [i.e. variation] of species: [but] whether a convert to us [in respect of natural selection] I do not quite know. We shall live to see all the younger men converts.

  This was a reference to biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines, London. Finally, Darwin paid Wallace this compliment: ‘There have been few such noble labourers in the cause of Natural Science as you are.’42

  NOTES

  1. Wallace, Alfred Russel, My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, p.59.

  2. Ibid, p.61.

  3. Ibid, p.123.

  4. Ibid, p.127.

  5. Ibid, p.124.

  6. Ibid, p.144.

  7. Chambers, Robert, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, p.24.

  8. Ibid, p.25.

  9. Ibid, p.54.

  10. Ibid, pp.109–10.

  11. Ibid, p. 125.

  12. Ibid, p. 132.

  13. Ibid, p. 148.

  14. Wallace, op. cit., p.144.

  15. Ibid,

  16. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  17. Wallace, op. cit., p.144.

  18. Ibid, p. 149.

  19. Ibid, p. 147.

  20. Ibid, pp.155–6.

  21. Ibid, p. 164.

  22. Ibid, p. 183.

  23. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 9 May [1856], C.6. p.106.

  24. Darwin, Francis, p.58.

  25. Wallace, op. cit., p.183.

  26. Darwin to A. R. Wallace, 22 December 1857, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: Volume 6,1856–1857, pp.514–15.

  27. Darwin to A. R. Wallace, 1 May 1857, Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 2086.

  28. Wallace, op. cit., p.184.

  29. Darwin, Francis, op. cit., p.58.

  30. Darwin to Charles Lyell, 18 [June 1858], The Correspondence of Charles Dar win: Volume 7, 1858–1859, p.107.

  31. Wallace, op. cit., p.189.

  32. Ibid, pp.189–90.

  33. Ibid, p. 190.

  34. Ibid, p. 191.

  35. Darwin to Charles Lyell [25 June 1858], Cor.7, p.118.

  36. J. D. Hooker and Charles Lyell to the Linnaean Society, 3 June 1858, Cor.7, pp.122–3.

  37. Cor.7, p.130, Note 3.

  38. Darwin to J. D. Hooker, 13 [July 1858], Cor.7, p.129.

  39. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology 3, 30 August 1858, pp.45–62.

  40. Darwin, Francis, op. cit., pp.57–8.

  41. Ibid, p.59.

  42. Darwin to A. R. Wallace, 6 April 1859, Cor.7, p.279

  Chapter 14

  Labor Omnia Vincit

  Meanwhile, Darwin’s thoughts turned to how the sea could act as a vehicle for the transportation of seeds from one land mass to another. In November 1855, having experimented with various types of seeds to see how long they would float in salt water, he told Henslow

  I assume that half-dried plants with their fruit or pods would certainly float for several weeks, but having tried some 30 or 40 plants I have found only a single one which floated after a month’s immersion, & most sink after one week. So that I am almost foiled about sea-transportal. However I may mention, the Capsicum seed germinated excellently after 137 days immersion in salt-water & Celery pretty well after the same period.1

  On 9 December, Darwin wrote to Edgar Leopold Layard of the Cape of Good Hope Civil Service, and founder and first curator of the South African Museum, to say

  I have during many years been collecting all the facts & reasoning which I could, in regard to the variation & origin of species, intending to give [i.e. present], as far as lies in my power, the many difficulties surrounding the subject on all sides. One chief line of investigation naturally is concerned with the amount of variation of all our domestic animals.

  For various reasons, I have determined to work on pigeons, poultry, ducks & rabbits … .2

  Said Darwin to Henslow on 22 January 1856

  I saw in the Times the death of your mother, but at so venerable an age that life can hardly be to any worth much further prolongation. In one sense I never knew what this greatest of losses is, for I lost my mother in very early childhood.3

  The outcome of Darwin’s insatiable appetite for his subject of natural history/natural science, was that he made numerous contacts in the field. For example, among the people with whom he corresponded in the year 1856 (including, of course, Huxley and Hooker), were Asa Gray (Fischer Professor of Natural History at Harvard University) and Syms Covington (Darwin’s servant and assistant for eight years, during and after the voyage of the Beagle, who had emigrated to Australia in 1839).4 Among his many and varied interests were the cross-breeding of ducks; the geographical distribution of crustacea; variations in the skeletons of different types of pigeon; the natural crossing of varieties of plants, including cacti; the trees of New Zealand, and what it was that enabled a glacier to flow or slide. (A selected list of those with whom Darwin corresponded, and also a list of his interests appears in the Appendix to this volume.)

  On 3 May Darwin told Laurence Edmondston, fellow naturalist and physician at Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Isles, ‘I have devoted my whole life to do what little I could for our favourite pursuit of Natural History … .’5

  The following month Darwin wrote to Fox to say that if he, Darwin, were to take Lyell’s advice and publish his theory in the form of a ‘Preliminary Essay … my work will be horribly imperfect & with many mistakes, so that I groan & tremble when I think of it’.6

  Also in June, Darwin wrote to Hooker in respect of entomologist and conchologist Thomas V. Wollaston and his newly published book On the Variation of Species, with a Special Reference to the Insecta; Followed by an Inquiry into the Nature of Genera.7 Wollaston did not share Darwin’s belief in transmutation, and referred to ‘the absurdity of the transmutational hypothesis’. Instead, he affirmed that ‘the entire living panorama’ was ‘the work of a Master’s [i.e. God, the Creator’s] hand8’. Such a notion was, to Darwin, like a red rag to a bull.

  I have been very deeply interested by Wollaston’s book, though I differ greatly from many of his doctrines. Did you ever read anything so rich, considering how very far he goes, as his denunciations against those who go further, ‘most mischievous’ ‘absurd’, ‘unsound’. Theology is at the bottom at some of this. I told him he was like [John] Calvin burning a heretic. It is a very valuable & clever book in my opinion. He has evidently read very little out of his own line: I urged him to read the New Zealand Essay [A reference to J. D. Hooker’s Flora Novae – Zelandia, in which the author examines ‘contemporary views about the variability and fixity of plant species’].9

  Darwin told Lyell on 5 July, ‘I am delighted that I may say (with absolute truth) that my essay is published at your suggestion … .’10 However, this statement proved to be premature, for that November, he wrote again to Lyell to say

  I am working very steadily at my big Book; I have found it impossible to publish any preliminary essay or sketch, but am d
oing my work as complete [ly] as my present materials allow without waiting to perfect them. And this much acceleration I owe to you.11

  Said Darwin to Samuel P. Woodward, assistant in the Department of Geology and Mineralogy, British Museum, on 18 July 1856

  I am growing as bad as the worst about species & hardly have a vestige of belief in the permanence of species left in me, & this confession will make you think very lightly of me; but I cannot help it, such has become my honest conviction though the difficulties & arguments against such heresy are certainly most weighty.12

  If the battle between Christian doctrine on the one hand and scientific evidence on the other was to be fought, there was no doubt in the mind of Darwin that science would emerge victorious. This did not mean, however, that the going would be easy. It was one thing to think private thoughts, write private notes, and share them with a select circle of friends. It was quite another to ‘take Arms against a Sea of trouble’13 by publishing his theory, thus incurring the wrath of the Church, criticism from unconvinced fellow scientists, and closer to home, the opprobrium of Emma and her Wedgwood family. Such was the dilemma in which Darwin found himself.

  In late July Darwin told Hooker, ‘Nothing is so vexatious to me, as so constantly finding myself drawing different conclusions from better judges than myself, from the same facts’.14

  Darwin told Emma’s sister-in-law Frances E. E. Wedgwood (née Mackintosh, wife of Hensleigh) in August that, although ‘I should have liked to have [tried] my hand at Reviewing [i.e. books and articles]’ he had rejected the notion. ‘I have so many years work in prospect in my present book on species & varieties that I am not willing to give up my time to any other occupation …’15

  ‘I do so wish I could understand clearly why you do not believe in accidental means of dispersion of plants’,16 wrote Darwin to Hooker in early 1857, indicating that the two men did not always see eye to eye.