Darwin, Charles Robert

Charles Robert (1809-1882), an English scientist. He was a native of Shrewsbury. He was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln. His father was an eminent physician. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was the author of a number of botanical works of an inquiring nature. Darwin was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge. At the age of twenty-two he received an appointment as naturalist on board the surveying ship Beagle, then about to be sent out by the British government on a voyage of exploration. This appointment was just what Darwin wanted. It determined his life work. The Beagle spent five years in circumnavigating the globe. Darwin returned with an immense store of specimens. Among his writings which resulted from the trip are his Journal of Researches, Zoology of the Voyage, Structure of Coral Reefs, Volcanic Islands, and Geological Observations. These give him a reputable standing as a man of science.

Among questions agitating men of science at that time was that of species. Are we, for instance, to consider the Shetland pony and the Norman draught horse as descendants of a common wild ancestor, or do they represent two distinct acts of creation?

Various appointments and sources of revenue permitted Darwin to retire to a quiet country residence where he carried on a series of experiments with pigeons, extending through a number of years. He chose the pigeon because it is possible to breed a great many successive generations in a short time. A pair of pigeons will have great grandchildren before the season is over. Now the pouter pigeon is famous for an ability to puff out the neck until it looks larger than the body. By selecting a pair of pouters, that lacked somewhat in the power of swelling the neck, and choosing from their young a pair that had still less of this power, and from the grandchildren a pair with still less again, he was able to breed pigeons that were not pouters. In the same way other strains, as fantails, were bred back and back toward a type with ordinary tails. By a long series of experiments he was able to announce that the numerous types and colors found in the fancier's dovecotes could all be bred back to a type resembling the rock pigeon that nests in the cliffs of the Mediterranean; from which he argued that our tame pigeons, of whatever color or variety, are derived from a single ancestral type, the rock pigeon. The result of his observations he made public in a famous volume called The Origin of Species.

Two phrases, "natural selection," and "the survival of the fittest," are heard frequently in connection with Darwin's theories. The strongest, and presumably the handsomest members of a species, naturally choose each other and improve the race, while the weaker, less favored members, especially if food be scarce or conditions unfavorable, are forced to the wall. In this way, by a process of natural selection a species may change in a marked degree.

The other phrase may be understood better perhaps by an illustration, drawn from the common muskrat that lives in shallow waters and burrows in banks. In case the homes of these animals were to dry up gradually, the theory is that those members of the species least able to do with less water would perish, while the others lived. This process, being kept up from generation to generation as the sloughs dried up more and more, would finally develop a species of dry-land muskrats. Out of each generation, the survival of the fittest members for a land life would develop a species of muskrats as able to live without bodies of water as are the house rats.

To illustrate further, in a hawk-infested district, the swiftest, shiftiest sparrows of each generation escape the hawks. The survival of the fittest members of each generation would develop in time a species of swift, alert sparrows, practically safe from old-fashioned hawks. In the meantime, the starvation of hawks unable to catch sparrows, and the survival of the fittest hawks of each generation would, in time, develop a new species of extraordinarily quick sparrowhawks. Thus we should have a new species of sparrows and a corresponding new species of hawks.

Other factors enter, of course, into Darwin's theory, but natural selection and the survival of the fittest account, in his judgment, with changes of climate, soil, and moisture, for numerous species and varieties of the violet, Indian corn, sheep--in short, of both plants and animals. An extension of the Darwinian theory, which is closely connected with evolution, has led to many startling conclusions; for instance, that the whale and the seal are descendants of former land animals, and that the remote ancestors of birds were reptiles, etc.

At first these doctrines met with opposition from those who considered them irreverent. Agassiz was one of those who stood stoutly for separate acts of creation. Scientific men now, however, have very generally accepted Darwin's theories; holding it quite as reverent to trace varieties and species to the working of great laws as to assert that the Creator established fixed types which defy the influence of time and season.

In a late work, The Descent of Man, published 1871, Darwin maintained that man is descended from an early ancestor, having more or less of a monkey-like nature. For this theory he was bitterly assailed as ungodly. His favorite retort was that he would rather be regarded as the descendant of a monkey than of some people that might be named. Darwin was buried fittingly in Westminster Abbey.

The present generation think of him who bore this name as a rare combination of genius, industry, and unswerving veracity, who earned his place among the most famous men of his age by sheer native power, in the teeth of a gale of popular prejudice, and, notwithstanding provocations which might have excused any outbreak, kept himself clear of all envy, hatred, and malice, nor dealt otherwise than fairly and justly with the unfairness and injustice showered upon him; while to the end of his days he was ready to listen with patience and respect to the most insignificant of reasonable objectors.--Huxley.

See Pigeon; Wallace; Cross-Fertilization; Mutation Theory