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.

    38/184 (page 24)
    24 SANDRA HERBERT The dates when important specimens referred to in the Red Notebook were identified by professional zoologists are as follows : the Macrauchema was referred to descriptively, although not by that name, in a letter written to Richard Owen dated 23 January 1837; the Galápagos mockingbirds were described at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London on 28 February 1837; and the new species of South American rhea was described at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London on 14 March 1837. See also notes 152, 159, and 149 to the text. Nora Barlow, ed.. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin {Juonáon, 1958), p. 118. The similarity of the polygonal plates of the glyptodon specimen to those of the armadillo was noticed by Darwin immediately I saw them. (Darwin to J. S. Henslow, 24 November 1832, in Nora Barlow, ed., Darwin and Henslow: The Growth of An Idea [Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967], p. 61.) Darwin was not the first to note the similarity of the large plates to the smaller ones of the armadillo. On this point see Thomas Falkner, A Description of Patagonia (London, 1774), p. 55. Sir Gavin de Beer, ed., 'Darwin's Journal', Bulletin of the British Museum {Natural History) Historical Series, vol. 2 (1959), p. 7. Nora Barlow, ed., 'Darwin's Ornithological Notes', Bulletin of the British Museum {Natural History) Historical Series, vol. 2 (1963), p. 262. The full paragraph reads as follows: I have specimens from four of the larger islands; the two above enumerated, and (3349: female. Albermarle Isd.) & (3350: male: James Isd).—The specimens from Chatham & Albermarle Isd appear to be the same; but the other two are different. In each Isld. each kind is exclusively found: habits of all are indistin¬ guishable. When I recollect, the fact that the form of the body, shape of scales & general size, the Spaniards can at once pronounce, from which Island any Tortoise may have been brought. When I see these Islands in sight of each other, & [but del.'] possessed of but a scanty stock of animals, tenanted by these birds, but slightly differing in structure & filling the same place in Nature, I must suspect they are only varieties. The only fact of a similar kind of which I am aware, is the constant asserted difference — between the wolf-like Fox of East & West Falkland Islds. — If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks the zoology of Archipelagoes—will be well worth examining; for such facts [would inserted] undermine the stability of Species. For more extended discussion of this passage see Sandra Herbert, 'The Place of Man in the Development of Darwin's Theory of Transmutation, Part I. To July 1837', Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 7 (1974), pp. 236-240. From Darwin's commentary on specimens in John Gould, The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Part HI: Birds. 5 numbers. (London, 1838-1841), pp. 63- 64. Darwin to J. S. Henslow, 30 October 1836, in Nora Barlow, ed., Darwin and Henslow: The Growth of An Idea (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), p. 122.