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.

    149/184 (page 135)
    NOTES 135 Humboldt, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, vol. 3, pp. 347-348: The mines of Huantajaya, surrounded with beds of rock salt are particularly celebrated on account of the great masses of native silver which they contain in a decomposed gangue; and they furnish annually between 70 and 80 thousand marcs of silver. The muriate of conchoidal silver, sulphuretted silver, galena with small grains, quartz, carbonate of lime, accompany the native silver. Also pp. 348-349: [Antonio de] Ulloa after travelling over a great part of the Andes, affirms that silver is peculiar to the high table lands of the Cordilleras, called Punas or Paramos, and that gold on the other hand abounds in the lowest, and consequently warmest regions; but this learned traveller appears to have forgot that in Peru the richest provinces in gold are the partidos of Pataz and Huailas, which are on the ridge of the Cordilleras.... It [gold] has also been extracted from the right bank of the Rio de Micuipampa, between the Cerro de San Jose, and the plain called by the natives, Choropampa or plain of shells, on account of an enormous quantity of ostracites, cardium and other petrifications of sea shells contained in the formation of alpine limestone of Gualgayoc. Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Voyage autour du monde. . .1766-1169, (2nd ed. ; Paris, 1772), vol. 1, p. 291 : Ces hommes bruts [the Fuegians] traitoient les chefs- d-ceuvre de l'industrie humaine, comme ils traitent les loix de la nature & ses phéno¬ mènes. See J-R, p, 242. Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, vol. 1, pp. 168-169: On the coast [at Guayaquil]... is found that exquisite purple, so highly esteemed among the ancients; but the fish from which it was taken, having been either unknown or for¬ gotten, many moderns have imagined the species to be extinct. This colour, however, is found in a species of shell-fish growing on rocks washed by the sea. They are some¬ thing larger than a nut, and are replete with a juice, probably the blood, which, when expressed, is the true purple ; for if a thread of cotton, or any thing of a similar kind, be dipt in this liquor, it becomes of a most vivid colour, which repeated washings are so far from obliterating, that they rather improve it ; nor does it fade by wearing. . . . Stuffs died with this purple are also highly valued. This precious juice is extracted by different methods. Some take the fish out of its shell, and laying it on the back of their hand, press it with a knife from the head to the tail, separating that part of the body into which the compression has forced the juice, and throw away the rest. In this manner they proceed till they have provided themselves with a sufficient quantity. Then they draw the threads through the liquor, which is the whole process. But the purple tinge does not immediately appear, the juice being at first of a milky colour; it then changes to green; and, lastly, into this celebrated purple. Others pursue a diff¬ erent method in extracting the colour ; for they neither kill the fish, nor take it en¬ tirely out of its shell ; but squeeze it so hard as to express a juice, with which they die the thread, and afterwards replace the fish on the rock whence it was taken. Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, vol. 1, p. 281 : As the pestilence, whose ravages among the human species in Europe, and other parts, are so dreadful.