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

  • Charles Darwin
Date:
1980
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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.

    141/184 (page 127)
    NOTES 127 ' Bosh' is written in the margin in pencil. Other entries on the page are in ink. Alexander von Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (London, 1811), vol. 3, p. 113. Quoted correctly with minor variations in capitalization, punctuation, and the insertion of ' & ' for ' and '. Robert Brown, F.R.S. (1773-1858), pre-eminent British botanist of his day, from 1806 to 1822 librarian to and thereafter a fellow of the Linnean Society of London. In 1827 Brown arranged for the transfer of the botanical collection of Sir Joseph Banks, F.R.S. (1743-1820) to the British Museum, and from 1827 to his death Brown supervised the botanical collections of the Museum. Brown also assembled a valuable collection of fossil woods ('F.W.') which hé bequeathed to the Museum. Darwin was referring here to the opinion of James Hutton (note 130) respect¬ ing the formation of fossil wood. In Hutton's view 'undulations' in silicified fossil wood would be traced to the action of exterior heat and pressure. See Playfair, Illus¬ trations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, pp. 24-25; . . .wherever they [fossils] bear marks of having been fluid, these marks are such as characterize the fluidity of fusion [caused by igneous consolidation], and distinguish it from that which is pro¬ duced by solution in a menstruum.. . . Fossil-wood, penetrated by siliceous matter, is a substance well known to mineralogists; it is found in great abundance in various situations, and frequently in the heart of great bodies of rock. On examination, the siliceous matter is often observed to have penetrated the wood very unequally, so that the vegetable structure remains in some places entire ; and in other places is lost in a homogeneous mass of agate or jasper. Where this happens, it may be remarked, that the line which separates these two parts is quite sharp and distinct, altogether different from what must have taken place, had the flinty matter been introduced into the body of the wood, by any fluid in which it was dissolved, as it would then have pervaded the whole, if not uniformly, yet with a regular gradation. In those specimens of fossil-wood that are partly penetrated by agate, and partly not penetrated at all, the same sharpness of termination may be remarked, and is an appearance highly characteristic of the fluidity produced by fusion. Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, vol. 3, p. 113. The original quotation begins, 'The true native iron,. . . ' and varies slightly from Darwin's citation in punctuation and in the spelling out of the word 'and'. Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, vol. 3, pp. 129-130: The Mexican veins are to be found for the most part in primitive and transition rocks . .. and rarely in the rocks of secondary formation... In the old continent granite, gneiss and micaceous slate (glimmer-schiefer) constitute the crest of high chains of mountains. But these rocks seldom appear outwardly on the ridge of the Cordilleras of America, particularly in the central part contained between the 18° and 22° of north latitude. Beds of amphibolic porphyry, greenstone, amygdaloid, basalt and