The red notebook of Charles Darwin / edited, with an introduction and notes by Sandra Herbert.

  • Charles Darwin
Date:
1980
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: The red notebook of Charles Darwin / edited, with an introduction and notes by Sandra Herbert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    100/184 (page 86)
    86 SANDRA HERBERT Sir John F. W. Herschel, F.R.S. (1792-1871), distinguished English astro¬ nomer and man of science; presumably personal communication. Darwin met Herschel—the most memorable event which, for a long period, I have had the good fortune to enjoy—sometime between 8-15 June 1836 during the Beagle's call at the Cape of Good Hope where Herschel was living, being then engaged in his four-year study of stars visible in the southern hemisphere. See Diary y p. 409. Months before, Herschel had described his new notion of the cause of volcanic action in a letter to Charles Lyell dated 20 February 1836. Probably he repeated the same explanation to Darwin in June. Herschel's letter to Lyell has been published by Walter F. Cannon in 'The Impact of Uniformitarianism', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 105 (1961), pp. 301-314. See, for example, Herschel's summary comment to Lyell on p. 310: I don't know whether I have made clear to you my notions about the effects of the removal of matter from. . .above to below the sea.—1®^ it produces mechanical subversion of the equilibrium of pressure.—2*^^^ it also, & by a different process (as above explained at large) produces a subversion of the equilibrium of temperature. The last is the most important. It must be an excessively slow process. & it will depend on the depth of matter deposited.—2^ on the quantity of water retained by it under the great squeeze it has got—3^^^ on the tenacity of the incumbent mass—whether the influx of caloric from below—which MUST TAKE PLACE acting on that water, shall either heave up the whole mass, as a new continent—or shall crack it & escape as a submarine volcano—or shall be suppressed until the mere weight of the continually accumulating mass breaks its lateral supports at or near the coast lines & opens there a chain of volcanoes. Sir Andrew Smith, F.R.S. (1797-1872), English army medical doctor and zoologist, later director-general army medical department; personal communication. Darwin's Diary, p. 409, records for 8-15 June 1836: During these days I became acquainted with several very pleasant people. With Dr A. Smith who has lately returned from his most interesting expedition to beyond the Tropic, I took some long geological rambles. On his return to England in 1837 Smith began work on his Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa. 5 parts. (London, 1838-1849). The meaning of this entry is obscure. The H.M.S. Chanticleer did not stop at Fernambuco [Recife] during its 1828-1831 voyage, nor was Fernambuco on the Beagle's itinerary in June of 1836, when this entry was presumably made. In the narrative from the Chanticleer's voyage, however, there are passages which describe decomposing granitic rock at Rio de Janeiro, and refer to what seem to be related formations at Para [Belém] and Maranham [Sao Luis]. Given Darwin's apparent uncertainty in this entry about location, as indicated by his two cancellations, it may have been these passages which he had in mind. See William H. B. Webster, Narrative of a Voyage to the Southern Atlantic Ocean. . . 1828-1830 [sic] (London, 1834), vol. 1, pp. 52-53: The country about Rio in a geological point of view has large claims to attention. Granite and gneiss are the prevailing formation The rocks in some