Charles Darwin was born in Shrewbury, England, on February 12, 1809. On the same day another great man, Abraham Lincoln, was born in America. In those days shools did not teach science as they do today. Twelve-year-old Darwin, who wanted to spend his time out of doors collecting plants and watching animals, had to stay inside and learn how to write poetry. He was very bad at it — so bad, in fact, that his father once wrote him angrily, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."

Charles' father then decided that he should be a doctor and sent him to a medical school. But soon it was clear that young Darwin was not at all interested in medicine. So his father tried to make a clergyman out of him and sent him to the University at Cambridge. Still Darwin could not really make himself care for anything but hunting and natural history.

As soon as he graduated, one of Darwin's professors, a scientist who understood him better than his father, urged him to apply for the job of naturalist aboard H. M. S. "Beagle". The ship was to make a voyage around the world, surveying trade routes and looking for ways to improve trade for British merchants in the far-off corners of the earth. The captain was ready to give up part of his own cabin to any young man who would go with him, without pay, as a naturalist. Today no one remembers how much the "Beagle" helped British merchants. The information the trip provided about trade was far less important than the knowledge Darwin obtained — knowledge that was to change people's way of thinking. It was during his trip on the "Beagle" that Darwin first began to develop his theory of evolution.

Darwin's father was against the idea of his going. Finally Charles' uncle persuaded the father to agree. And even then young Darwin almost didn't get the job because the captain of the "Beagle" thought you could judge a man's character by his nose. Darwin's, he said, showed he did not have enough energy and determination for the voyage. But at last he, too, said that Darwin could come along. Later, when the two of them became good friends, the captain admitted that his idea about noses was not right.

So Charles Darwin set sail from Plymouth on December 27, 1831. For almost five years he lived on the ship. Everywhere it sailed he collected facts and more facts — about rocks, plants and animals. The more facts he gathered from different parts of the world, the more he became convinced that the things he observed in nature could not be explained by the old idea that each species had been separately created.

What Made Darwin Wonder?

While the "Beagle" was sailing in and out among the Galapagos Islands off the west coast of South America, Darwin noticed a very remarkable and important thing: although the plants and animals on the islands resembled those on the mainland, most of them belonged to different species. He saw also that the birds on one island were almost the same as those on another island but not quite. There were all sorts of little differences in their colouring, their songs, their nests, their eggs. On the islands he collected no less than 25 different species of land birds that were not found on the mainland.

He also saw two kinds of giant tortoise found only in the Galapagos. Some were so large that it took eight men to lift them. And he found that the natives could tell which island a tortoise came from just by looking at it.

All these similarities and differences must mean something. "It strikes me with wonder," Darwin wrote in his diary.

The more he wondered and observed, the more he began to realize that there was only one possible answer to the puzzle. If all these species of plants and animals had developed from common ancestors, then it was easy to understand their similarities and differences. At some time, Darwin tought, the common ancestors of both the island and the mainland species had travelled from the mainland to the islands. Later, all the species in both places, through slow changes, became different from each other.

Clues And More Clues

After the "Beagle" returned to England, Darwin began his first notebook on the origin of species. During the next twenty years he filled notebook after notebook with still more facts that he and others dicovered about the world of living things. These facts all led to one conclusion: that all living things are descended from common ancestors.

Darwin proved the truth of evolution, the descent with change of one species from another. Where others before him had failed Darwin succeeded in convincing the world that he was right about evolution. He succeeded for two reasons. He collected an enormous number of facts and put them together so that they told the whole story. And he not only declared that evolution occurred, but also explained how it worked and what caused it. This he called the theory of natural selection.

Nearly a hundred years have passed since Darwin's great book "The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection" was published. People have found out new facts about evolution, and especially about inheritance. These facts have made more precise our ideas of how natural selection works. This does not mean that Darwin's theory was wrong. On the contrary, a true theory is alive; like everything else in the world, it changes and grows. Only a dead, useless theory stays the same down to the last detail.

Sean Townes

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