Front page article in Ames Tribune 4 September 2008

The Ichneumonidae

The Ichneumonidae are wasps that sting various other insects to paralyze them, then deposit their eggs inside their bodies for the wasp larvae to feed on when they hatch.

“I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.” – Letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860.

The Huxley – Wilberforce Debate

Where: Oxford University, a location unlikely to be receptive to Darwin’s ideas

What: Annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

When: June 1860 – less than 7 months after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which was the talk of England

Who: Thomas Henry Huxley, 35 years old

Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, 54 years old

Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1805 – 1873)

Son of the abolitionist William Wilberforce. A notable public speaker, known as “Soapy Sam.”

A graduate of Oxford (first class in mathematics and second in classics).

Became Lord Bishop of Oxford, a member of the House of Lords and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

The BAAS Meeting of June 1860

Saturday, June 30: Session on Darwinism and society; meeting moved to a larger room to accommodate 700 persons: clergy, undergraduate students, many brightly-dressed women.

An American, Dr. Draper, from New York, droned on for about 90 minutes “On the Intellectual Development of Europe Considered with Reference to the Views of Mr. Darwin.”

Three more men spoke but were shouted down in a matter of only nine minutes, and the crowd then demanded to hear Bishop Wilberforce, who had been prepared with attacks on Darwin by Richard Owen.

Wilberforce attacked Darwin’s book as “unphilosophical,” said Egyptian mummies disproved evolution, and showed why man was very different from animals.

Continued …

Wilberforce, in a good mood because of the support the clergy and students were giving him, ad-libbed, turning to Huxley and asking him whether he was descended from apes on his grandfather’s side or his grandmother’s.

Huxley remarked to Sir Bejamin Brodie, sitting next to him, “The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands.”

Huxley rose to answer the bishop after the conclusion of his speech, saying he “had listened with great attention to the Lord Bishop’s speech but had been unable to discern either a new fact or a new argument in it – except indeed the question raised as to my personal predilection in the matter of ancestry.”

Huxley’s report of what he said next:

“If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.”

Pandemonium broke loose among those who heard these words, and one woman reportedly fainted. Huxley said the audience listened very carefully to the rest of his remarks.

Caricatures of Wilberforce and Huxley (Vanity Fair)

The Wilberforce – Huxley debate led to great public discussion, with sharp divisions between those who insisted on the truth of revealed scripture and those who believe Darwin’s theory.

The Bishop of Worcester reported back to his wife what had happened, since she was not present, and she is said to have replied to him:

“Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.”

Aside: Mark Twain once wrote that “God created man because he was disappointed in the monkey.”

The rest of the talks …

Following Huxley, there were talks by several other noted biologists supporting Darwin: Joseph Hooker, John Stevens Henslow, John Lubbock.

Then Admiral FitzRoy rose to attack Darwin’s ideas. The mathematician George Johnstone Stoney later wrote that FitzRoy stated that he had “often expostulated with his old comrade of the Beagle for entertaining views which were contradictory to the first chapter of Genesis,” and asked the members of the audience to believe revealed scripture instead of a person who was not present at the Creation. The biologist Julius Carus remembered to Darwin that “Admiral FitzRoy expressed his sorrows for having given you the opportunities of collecting facts for such a shocking theory as yours.”

Finally, a number of younger biologists spoke in enthusiastic support of Darwin’s ideas, and the meeting was over.

Robert FitzRoy’s Career

Entered the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth in February 1818, at the age of 12.

Entered the Royal Navy in 1819.

Had a brilliant academic career, becoming lieutenant in 1824 (still a teenager) with an unprecedented 100% score on the examination.

Served during the next few years on the HMS Thetis and the HMS Ganges, where his talents were quite evident, then on the Beagle and other ships, eventually becoming a vice-admiral.

Upon his return from the second Beagle voyage he married a very religious wife to whom he had been engaged – but he had never mentioned this to Darwin during the five-year voyage.

FitzRoy became more and more of a Biblical literalist as the years went by, and regretted having brought Darwin on his ship.

Governor of New ZealandIn 1841 the first governor of New Zealand, William Hobson, was appointed; previously, New Zealand was administered from Australia.

When he died in later 1842, FitzRoy was appointed as the second governor. He served from December 26, 1843 to November 18, 1845. Despite being given little military equipment and personnel, he was supposed to maintain order and protect the Maori as British settlers poured into the New Zealand, wanting land. The only revenue he had came from customs duties.

Earlier in 1843 the Maori had killed 22 settlers in the “Wairau Affray (or Massacre)” and FitzRoy had to investigate it. He did not punish any of the Maori responsible and became disliked by the settlers, who basically wanted the Maori exterminated, so FitzRoy’s term was short. FitzRoy was succeeded by Sir George Grey, who was given adequate military resources, and governed from 1845 to 1854 and again from 1861 to 1868.

FitzRoy the Meteorologist

FitzRoy retired from active service in 1851, in part because of ill health.

In 1854 he was made head of a new meteorological office in the Board of Trade for the purpose of collecting weather data at sea. This was the forerunner of the “Met Office” (Meterological Office), which is the United Kingdom’s national weather service.

FitzRoy invented several types of barometers for use by fishermen, and they continued in production into the 20th century,

They were marked with “Admiral FitzRoy’s special remarks” – such as “When rising: in winter the rise of the barometer presages frost.

FitzRoy as meteorologist …

On October 26, 1859 a great storm on the Welsh coast destroyed the steam clipper Royal Charter, returning from Melbourne, Australia to Liverpool. About 459 lives were lost, only 21 male passengers ad 18 male crew members surviving.

FitzRoy then began developing charts to predict the weather, calling his system “forecasting the weather,” the name still used today by weatherpersons around the world.

In 1860 he began providing gale warnings along the British coast, and in 1863 gathered a lot of information in his book, The Weather Book.

Death of Robert FitzRoy

April 30, 1865 – FitzRoy, who was depressed, got up in the morning, went to the bathroom, and slit his throat with a razor.

He had spent his whole fortune of £6,000 on public expenditures, leaving his wife and daughter destitute. However, friends convinced the government to pay back £3,000, Darwin added another £100, and Queen Victoria allowed his widow to live at Hampton Court Palace.

Named for Robert FitzRoy:

• Mount FitzRoy, in Argentina and Chile, at the extreme south end of South America – an important tourist attraction.

• Fitzroy River in northern Western Australia.

• The conifer Fitzroya cupressoides of the cypress family, probably South America’s tallest tree (over 45 m high); a specimen in Chile was determined to be 3622 years old, the third oldest verified age on record for a tree.

Fitzroya cupressoides

Darwin keeps working on natural selection

Darwin enlisted the help of anyone he could, including his neighbor, John Lubbock (Lord Avebury):

“I write now in great haste to beg you to look (though I know how busy you are, but I cannot think of any other naturalist who would be careful) at any field of common red clover (if such a field is near you) and watch the hive-bees: probably (if not too late) you will see some sucking at the mouth of the little flowers and some few sucking at the base of the flowers, at holes bitten through the corollas. All that you will see is that the bees put their heads deep into the [flower] head and rout about. Now, if you see this, do for Heaven’s sake catch me some of each and put in spirits and keep them separate.”

Darwin’s sons were intrigued by their father’s theory of evolution by natural selection, and quickly became young Darwinians. Darwin was astonished one day by Horace’s theory about adders:

“Horace said to me yesterday, ‘If everyone would kill adders they would come to sting less.’ I answered, ‘Of course they would, for there would be fewer.’ He replied indignantly: ‘I did not mean that; but the timid adders which run away would be saved, and in time they would never sting at all.’ Natural selection of cowards.”

Henry Walter Bates (1825 –

1892)Born in Leicester, no formal education after age 12. Like William Smith, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Thomas Henry Huxley, Bates was an auto-didact.

Bates had various jobs, but read widely and studied nature. He met Wallace in Leicester and in 1847 they decided to go to the Amazon River, paying for the trip by sending specimens back to England and having an agent sell them. They traveled and collected together for a year, then split up to cover different ground. Wallace eventually returned to England in 1852 while Bates remained a total of 11 years, until 1859.

Bates brought back 14,000 specimens, mostly insects, including 8,000 new species! He shipped his specimens back on three different ships, to avoid the calamitous loss Wallace had experienced, and all three returned safely.

Darwin persuaded Bates (who was extremely reluctant to write) to publish information about his travels and experiences, and Bates’ wonderful book, The Naturalist on the River Amazons [sic], was published in 1862 by John Murray (Darwin’s publisher) – a great naturalist travel book ranking with Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle.

Shown on the right is Figure 32 of Bates’ book.

“I had an amusing adventure one day with these birds [curl-crested toucans]. I had shot one from a rather high tree in a dark glen in the forest, and entered the thicket where the bird had fallen to secure my booty. It was only wounded, and on my attempting to seize it, set up a loud scream. In an instant, as if by magic, the shady nook seemed alive with these birds, although there was certainly none visible when I entered the jungle. They descended towards me, hopping from bough to bough, some of them swinging on the loops and cables of woody lianas, and all croaking and fluttering their wings like so many furies. If I had had a long stick in my hand I could have knocked several of them over. After killing the wounded one, I began to prepare for obtaining more specimens and punishing the viragos for their boldness; but the screaming of their companion having ceased, they remounted the trees, and before I could reload, every one of them had disappeared.” – Bates, Chapter 12

Batesian Mimicry

Bates is best remembered for having discovered the phenomenon called “Batesian Mimicry,” which is the evolutionary development in a species of characteristics which mimic those of a related species which is unpalatable to predators, so that the predators also avoid the mimic species. (There is another type of mimicry, Mullerian mimicry.)

Bates discovered mimicry in butterflies, but it has since been observed in a wide variety of species, including other insects, snakes and birds

This is a plate from a paper by Bates published in 1862. The unpalatable species of butterflies are on the second and fourth rows, and the mimics are on the first and third rows.Batesian mimicry is an excellent example of evolution, as Darwin realized, which is why he supported Bates’ book.

1862: Publication of Darwin’s The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects.

Orchids were not just flowers of great beauty created for the enjoyment of human beings, but flowers of great complexity whose evolutionary history could be discerned by the study of how they were pollinated.Darwin carefully studied his orchids – and many he had collected and received from acquaintances.

Criticisms of Darwin’s Theory by Scientists

In the early 1860s, following the publication of On the Origin of Species, attacks on Darwin’s theories began by real scientists, as opposed to criticisms by clergymen with little or no training in science.

Some criticisms were by naturalists who had long believed in creationism and were loathe to change their opinion. Notable among these were the geologist Adam Sedgwick and anatomist Richard Owen in Britain and geologist/zoologist Louis Agassiz in America, but there were many others as well. Many scientists became convinced of the reality of evolution, but not of the role of natural selection.

Then there were the physical scientists …

The Physicists Attack Darwin

Some of the fiercest and most telling criticisms of Darwin – and the ones that worried him the most – came from the physicists and engineers.

First, physicists were still very mechanistic and deterministic in those days, before the discovery of statistical processes like radioactivity and the development of quantum mechanics or even chaos theory. They did not like the apparently important role of randomness in natural selection.

Second, physicists believed the earth’s age could not possibly be as old as geologists and evolutionists thought and needed, so that there was not enough time for the gradual processes leading to evolution of life on earth.

Third, under the currently-accepted theory of blending inheritance (children’s characteristics a blend of those of their parents) mutations, however favorable to evolution, would disappear from the population.

The Age of the Earth Controversy

In 1650 Anglican Archbishop Ussher estimated the age of the earth as 5654 years, created the night before 23 October 4004 B.C.

1779: the French naturalist Buffon (the Comte du Buffon) estimated the age of the Earth as 75,000 years – much older than the Biblical estimate. He obtained this age by an experiment using a small Earth-like globe and measuring its rate of cooling, and extrapolating to the real Earth.

1856: Hermann von Helmholtz estimates the age of the Earth as 22 million years, based on his estimate of the time it would take the Sun to condense to its present size from the original nebula of gas and dust. Simon Newcomb similarly calculated an age of 18 million years in 1892.

James Ussher (1581– 1656)

Anglican Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (1625 – 1656).

Born to a prominent Anglo-Irish family in Dublin.

A gifted and prolific scholar.

Determined (1650 – 1654) that the world was created at nightfall preceding 23 October 4004 B.C.

Charles Lyell’s Opinion

Charles Lyell always considered the Earth to be extremely old. As early as 1830 he had concluded that there must be a steady internal source of heat inside the Earth in order to account for the volcanic activity which had been occurring throughout the whole history of the Earth. He did not accept the concept of a gradually cooling Earth.

Darwin’s theory of evolution required immensely long periods of time, much longer than any of the estimates of the Earth’s age during his lifetime, so he was favorably disposed towards Lyell’s arguments about the antiquity of the Earth.

Estimates by William Thompson (Lord Kelvin)

1862: William Thompson (later Lord Kelvin) estimated the age of the Earth as between 24 million and 400 million years, by assuming that the Earth was originally a completely molten ball of rock (held together by gravitational forces), and then determining the time to the present from the Earth’s rate of cooling and present temperature. (He was unaware of heat being produced by radioactive decay processes, making the time much longer.)

1892: Now Lord Kelvin, he sharpens his estimate to 100 million years using thermal gradients, not realizing that the Earth’s highly viscous fluid mantle made his calculations erroneous. Later he revised his estimate to 20 million years.

William Thompson, Lord Kelvin – a photograph and a painting

William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824 – 1907)

Irish physicist, noted for his work in Thermodynamics, but also in other fields of physics.

Became a professor (of “natural philosophy”) at the University of Glasgow, where his father had been a professor of mathematics, in 1846, at the age of 22.

Made Baron Kelvin in 1892, the River Kelvin being the river that passes through the campus of the University of Glasgow.

Developed the absolute temperature scale named after him, the Kelvin scale (0 K is absolute zero).

Huxley’s attacks on Thomson’s calculation

First, Huxley pointed out Thomson’s assumptions on which his calculation was based, and said they might be wrong. The theory of the sun’s heat – that it was an initial quantity being continuously dissipated – might be wrong, and there might be a continuous new source of heat inside the earth, perhaps some unknown chemical activities.

Second, a smaller age of the earth was not necessarily fatal to the theory of natural selection, that biological change might be occurring faster than currently supposed. After all, the biological clock of evolution depended on the geological clock associated with sedimentary deposits – and that might be erroneous.

Huxley’s attacks on Kelvin’s calculation ….

Third, impressive mathematics doesn’t automatically strengthen an argument:

“I do not presume to throw the slightest doubt upon the accuracy of any of the calculations made by such distinguished mathematicians… But I desire to point out that this seems to be one of the many cases in which the admitted accuracy of mathematical processes is allowed to throw a wholly inadmissible appearance of authority over the results obtained by them. Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.” I.e, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

Other Estimates

1895: John Perry, modeling the Earth with a convective mantle and a thin crust, estimates the age of the Earth as 2 to 3 billion years.

Darwin’s son, George H. Darwin (University of Cambridge), theorizing that the Earth and Moon had broken apart when they were molten, estimated that tidal friction would have given the Earth its present 24-hour day in about 56 million years. Not helpful to his father’s theory!

1899-1900: John Joly (University of Dublin) estimated the oceans as being 80 to 100 million years old, based on their current salinity and the rate at which they accumulated salt through erosion.

The Reputations of Lyell & Darwin

Charles Lyell died in 1875 and Charles Darwin in 1882, at a time when the accepted estimates of the age of the Earth were so much shorter than their estimates based on geology and biology, that their reputations suffered. If their theories needed an Earth far more ancient than the Earth could possibly be, their theories must be wrong.

Geologists decided the old theory of catastrophism gave a better explanation of geological changes in the past, and biologists, while generally believing in evolution, were mostly reluctant to accept Darwin’s ideas about natural selection and gradualism.

Kelvin was considered a greater scientist than either Lyell or Darwin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Radioactivity and Radioactive Heating of the Earth Imply an Older Earth

1896: Discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel

1898: Marie and Pierre Curie discover the radioactive elements polonium and radium.

1903: Pierre Curie determines that a gram of radium produces enough heat in one hour to melt a gram of ice.

1903: George Darwin and John Joly point out that the heat generated by radioactivity would affect estimates of the age of the Earth, making it much older than the current estimates. Darwin’s son redeems himself!

Radiometric Dating

The discovery of radioactivity eventually led to the concept of radiometric dating, that is, dating a rock sample by comparing the abundance of naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes in the sample with the abundance of its decay products, together with knowledge of the decay rates of the isotopes involved. Much of the early work was done by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford, who taught at various universities in Canada and England, and his students.

Ernest Rutherford in 1908

Rutherford measured the concentration of helium, from radioactive alpha decay in a rock, and determined its age as 40 million years, assuming that no helium escaped from the rock and that the decay rate of radium determined by Ramsay and Soddy was accurate. These assumptions were in error, as it happens, but radiometric dating became more precise in succeeding years.

Giving a talk about his measurement and its implications for the age of the Earth, contradicting Lord Kelvin, he discovers that Kelvin has come to his talk.

Rutherford reports:

… continued

“I came into the room, which was half dark, and presently spotted Lord Kelvin in the audience and realized that I was in trouble at the last part of my speech dealing with the age of the earth, where my views conflicted with his. To my relief, Kelvin fell fast asleep, but as I came to the important point, I saw the old bird sit up, open an eye, and cock a baleful glance at me! Then a sudden inspiration came, and I said, 'Lord Kelvin had limited the age of the earth, provided no new source was discovered. That prophetic utterance refers to what we are now considering tonight, radium!' Behold! the old boy beamed upon me.”

Arthur Holmes (1890 – 1965)

The difficulties of dating by radiometric methods, particularly after isotopes were discovered and complicated matters, caused many physicists to stop using the method. Arthur Holmes (1890 – 1965) persisted, focusing on lead isotopes, and in 1911 estimated the age of the earth as at least 1.6 billion years. In 1927 he published The Age of the Earth, estimating it as 1.6 to 3.0 billion years.

Holmes was the author of some popular, well-known geological textbooks which touted the theory of continental drift (which led to plate tectonics) when no other geologists believed in it.

Claire Cameron Patterson

The first really accurate determination of the age of the earth, the value currently accepted, was made by C. C. Patterson (1922 – 1995), who was born in Mitchellville, Iowa and educated at Grinnell College, the University of Iowa, and the University of Chicago.

In 1956 C. C. Patterson, using lead isotope methods, produced an accurate age of 4.55 billion years, which has not changed significantly since then: the current range of estimates is 4.53 to 4.58 billion years. For this purpose he used meteoritic material from Arizona’s Canyon Diablo meteorite, formed at the beginning of the Solar System.

Patterson was also famous for his work on lead in the environment.

Blending Inheritance

In the days before anything was understood about genetics, little was known about inheritance other than that a child inherited characteristics from both of its parents, in equal or approximately equal amounts.

The generally-accepted theory was that inheritance was a blend of the characteristics of the parents: children of two short parents were short, children of two tall parents were tall, and children of one short and one tall parents were intermediate in height, and so forth. A red-flowered plant crossed with a white-flowered plant would have pink flowers.

Darwin seems to have thought that a favorable mutation – a mutation that gave an animal or plant some advantage in the struggle for survival – would increase in frequency over time (and, in fact, it does).

Fleeming Jenkin’s Criticism of Darwin

Fleeming Jenkin (1833 – 1885) was a remarkable scientist who became a professor of engineering at several universities, including the University of Edinburgh. He was the inventor of the telpherage (the first aerial tramway) and played a key role in the laying of underwater cables in several parts of the world. He was also the first to draw a graph of economic supply and demand, in a paper presented in 1870.

Jenkin, in a review of Darwin’s book published in The North British Review in 1867, pointed out that blending or “soft” inheritance would inevitably lead to the disappearance of favorable sports (mutations) in a population, suggesting that Darwin’s theory of natural selection was faulty. This criticism stung Darwin, who tried to save the situation with an odd and incorrect genetic theory.

Fleeming Jenkin at work in his laboratory.

After his sudden death at the age of 52, his family had a memoir written by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Mendelian Genetics

Today it is known that inheritance is not “soft” but “particulate.” Genes are inherited from both parents, and together the genotype (the set of a person’s genes) determines the phenotype (the characteristics of the individual), but generally in a complex manner.

The particulate nature became evident in the genetic studies on peas carried out from 1855 to 1863 by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, presented at a scientific meeting in 1865, and published in 1866 in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn, where they lay mostly neglected until rediscovery in 1900. No, he never sent his paper to Darwin, who supposedly left it unopened.

Above: Mendel. Left: Simple Mendelian inheritance

July 1868 – Visit to Isle of Wight

Darwin’s daughter Henrietta convinced her father to take a vacation on the Isle of Wight at Dimbola Lodge, the home of Julia Margaret Cameron. He met Alfred Lord Tennyson there and was photographed by Julia Cameron; this photograph appears to have been his and his family’s favorite photograph.

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 – 1879)

Julia Margaret Cameron was born in Calcutta to a British official of East India Company and married Charles Hay Cameron 20 years her senior. When he retired in 1848 they moved back to England and eventually bought property on the Isle of Wight.

In 1863, when she was 48, Julia Margaret Cameron was given a camera as a present from her daughter, and immediately began taking large numbers of pictures, both portraits and posed pictures based on religious themes or literary works. She was very forceful in convincing people to sit for her.

Many of her portraits are considered the best (and are sometimes the only) portrait of a particular individual.

Her photographic career lasted essentially from 1863 to 1875, when the Camerons moved to Ceylon, where there was no market for Julia’s photographs and no chemicals readily available.

Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph of the great Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry (at age of 16).

Portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Sir John Herschel, Thomas Carlyle, and her niece Julia Jackson (mother of the writer Virginia Woolf and the artist Vanessa Bell).

1866: Darwin and Religion

From time to time persons wrote to Darwin and asked about his views on religion, which he was reluctant to discuss, but he usually answered.

In 1866 a woman wrote to ask him if his theory about the origin of species was compatible with a belief in God, and Darwin wrote to her, “It has always appeared to me more satisfactory to look at the immense pain and suffering in this world as the inevitable result of the natural sequence of events, i.e., general laws, rather than from the direct intervention of God.”

1869: Henry James visits the Darwins

In 1869 Henry James, only 26 and not yet a famous writer, was invited to lunch with a friend at the Darwins. James wrote to his family that the Darwins’ carriage met them at Bromley Station and they “rolled quietly along through a lovely landscape, between springing hedges and ivy-crowned walls – ineffably verdurous meadows and tender-bursting copses … fine old seats and villas … Darwin’s house is a quiet old place … We lunched and spent an hour and a half seeing the old man, his wife and his daughter. Darwin is the sweetest, simplest, gentlest old Englishman you ever saw … He said nothing wonderful and was wonderful in no way but in not being so.”

Huxley: 1864 to 1870

From 1864 to 1870, despite many other demands on his time, Huxley published 39 papers, the most important one tracing the development of birds from reptiles. Previously, these two groups of animals were regarded more or less as opposites:• Reptiles were heavy and cold-blooded and they crawled.• Birds were light and warm-blooded and they flew.

Huxley showed that many extinct reptiles had characteristics of modern birds, and many extinct birds had characteristics of modern reptiles. He proposed three groups of vertebrates:• Mammals• Sauroids (birds and reptiles)• Ichthyoids (fish and amphibians)

Archaeopteryx specimen at Berlin MuseumFrom Solnhofen limestones in Bavaria, Germany

Maps showing area of Solnhofen limestones in Bavaria,

where the Archaeopteryx specimens were found.

Running for Election to the London School Board

During the 1860s, many British educators and politicians supported a national system of elementary education, and Huxley was especially vocal on this score, arguing that “the masses should be educated because they are men and women with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and that it is as true now, as it ever was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge.”

In 1870 Gladstone’s government passed an Education Act that provided for the immediate establishment of a London School Board, to consist of 49 members.

Huxley decided to run, not just by himself, but “running with a trade-unionist and carpenter William Cremer on a dream ticket, scientific training and artisan opportunity.” – Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s High Priest by Adrian Desmond (1994, 1997).

Huxley did not raise much money or campaign, but in an election address did say:

“It seems to be the fashion for candidates to assure you that they will do their best to spare the poverty of the Ratepayers. It is proper, therefore, for me to add that I can give you no such assurance on my own behalf… my vote will be given for that expenditure which can be shown to be just and necessary, without any reference to the question whether it may raise the rates a halfpenny.”

Surprisingly, Huxley won a seat on the board, coming in second in Marylebone (entitled to 7 seats) only to Elizabeth Garrett, Britain’s first female doctor. Huxley became Chairman of its Scheme of Education Committee, which set educational policy for London and, eventually, all of Britain.

Huxley’s Scheme of Education

Children need physical training with healthy exercise.

All pupils must be educated in domestic economy so they know how to make the best use of the money they earn.

Students must be taught the elementary laws of conduct, which, surprisingly, included reading the Bible (for its literary merit and morality).

Subjects taught must include elementary science, drawing and modelling and music.

In 14 months Huxley attended 170 committee meetings, traveled all over Britain, spoke to important Church and State leaders, drafted many documents, solicited witnesses for hearings – and destroyed his health, requiring 3 months of rest in the Mediterranean in 1872.

A question that occurred to me on reading about this:

Who was William Cremer, Huxley’s carpenter running mate?

What became of him?

Was he ever heard from again? Desmond, in his biography of Huxley, never mentions him again.

Was there anything special in the man, that might have attracted Huxley’s attention?

The answers are quite surprising!

(William) Randal Cremer (1828 – 1908)

William Randal Cremer (1828 – 1908)

• Born in Fareham (near Portsmouth) to a poor working family

• Raised (with two siblings) by his mother in great poverty after his father deserted the family• Apprenticed to building trades at age 15 and became a carpenter• Moved to London in 1852 and became active in workers’ affairs• Instrumental in creation of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners• Elected to London School Board in 1870 with T. H. Huxley• Elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Haggerston 1885 – 1895 and 1900 – 1908• Noted pacifist and supporter of arbitration in international affairs

Achievements of Sir William Randal Cremer:

• In 1887 presented a proposal to President Grover Cleveland for an Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty (signed in 1897)

• Co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1889, with members from eight countries including UK and France.

• Instrumental in first steps towards the creation of a “High Court of Nations” in The Hague

• Co-founder of the International Arbitration League.

• (Sole) winner of the 1903 Nobel Peace Prize; he donated his prize of £8,000 to the International Arbitration League

• Knighted in 1907

• Other honors: French Légion d'honneur, Norwegian Knighthood of Saint Olaf

Huxley in 1873

After his three-month vacation in 1872, Huxley quickly became too busy again, working hard but acceding to too many demands on his time and energy. His friends became very alarmed, and Lady Lyell prevailed on Emma Darwin to have Charles do something to help Huxley, whose financial situation was not good

Darwin decided to raise money for Huxley from his friends; 18 persons contributed a total of £ 2,100 – a very large sum, about two years salary for Huxley. But he also had to convince Huxley to accept the money, and everyone feared he wouldn’t. On April 23, 1873, Darwin sent a letter to Huxley; Emma Darwin was especially apprehensive, telling her sister, “He sent off the awful letter to Mr. Huxley today, and I hope we may hear tomorrow. It will be very awful.”

“My Dear Huxley – I have been asked by some of your friends (eighteen in number) to inform you that they have placed through Robarts, Lubbock and Company, the sum of £ 2100 to your account at your bankers. We have done this to enable you to get such complete rest as you may require for the re-establishment of your health; and in doing this we are convinced that we act for the public interest, as well as in accordance with our most earnest desires. Let me assure you that there is not a stranger or mere acquaintance amongst us. If you could have heard what was said, or could have read what was, as I believe, our inmost thoughts, you would know that we all feel towards you, as we should to an honoured and much loved brother. I am sure that you will return this feeling, and will therefore be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you in some degree, as this will be a happiness to us to the last day of our lives. Let me add that our plan occurred to several of your friends at nearly the same time and quite independently of one another. – My dear Huxley, your affectionate friend, Charles Darwin.”

As William Irwine wrote in Apes, Angels and Victorians, “It was not awful at all. Deeply touched and somewhat humbled, Huxley accepted.”

Huxley’s “rest” began with a trip to France with Joseph Hooker, acting as nurse. Hooker realized that Huxley was suffering from severe mental depression, until Huxley came across a History of the Miracles at Lourdes at a bouquiniste’s stall in Paris, and enjoyed himself finding natural causes for all the visions and cures reported therein. Afterwards they visited many geological sites and anthropological museums

When Hooker returned to England Huxley was joined by his wife and 12-year-old son Leonard, whom he discovered to be a very clever young man. Trying to tell Leonard about glaciers, his son said he already knew all that from John Tyndall’s book on glaciers.

Huxley humor: June 1, 1876 speech to academicians

“The recent speculation of biology leads to the conclusion that the scale of being may be thus stated – minerals, plants, animals, men who cannot draw, artists. … We have long been seeking, as you may be aware, for a distinction between men and animals. The old barriers have long been broken away. Other things walk on two legs and have no feathers, caterpillars make themselves clothes, kangaroos have pockets, …, beavers and ants engineer as well as the members of the noblest of professions. But … man alone can draw or make unto himself a likeness. This then, is the great distinction of humanity, and it follows that the most pre-eminently human of creatures are those who possess this distinction in the highest degree.”

Huxley visit to the United States

In 1876 (the centennial year) Mr. and Mrs. Huxley took a “second honeymoon” to the US, finding the country wild with excitement at their visit, whose main purpose was to be the opening speaker for the new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (a choice criticized by religious commentators). In his talk Huxley opposed entrance examinations to universities, preferring to weed students out as they proved deficient in ability or motivation. Huxley also went to Tennessee to visit his eldest sister, Eliza Scott, and was prevailed up to give a talk – so he worked up a talk on the geology of Tennessee.

Huxley tried not to accept payments for his lectures, but wound up with a £600 profit on the trip.

Huxley, Iowa

Huxley, Iowa, which was platted out in 1881, was apparently named for Thomas Henry Huxley.

The town’s web site and some other sources say that the man who platted the town, a railroad and land executive named S. S. Merrill, was Huxley’s nephew. This does not seem possible. No Huxley relatives seem to have the name Merrill; Huxley’s only sibling living in America, his eldest sister Eliza (“Lizzie”), had married a man named Salt who had changed his name to Scott.

Huxley studies the dog family (1879 – 1880)

In 1879 and 1880 Huxley became fascinated with investigating the Canidae, the dog family, dissecting and studying the anatomy of dogs, wolves, jackals, foxes – many specimens begged from friends in other parts of the world.

His conclusion was that dogs had a dual origin: big dogs descended from wolves and small dogs from jackals. In recent years it has become clear, especially from DNA evidence, that there is a single origin, and that all dogs are modified wolves.

Huxley concluded from his dog studies that taxonomy should not focus on concepts such as species and varieties:

“The suggestion that it may be as well to give up the attempt to define species, and to content oneself with recording the varieties of pelage [skin covering: hair, fur, wool, etc.] and stature which accompany a definable type of skeletal and dental structure in the geographical district in which the latter is indigenous, may be regarded as revolutionary; but I am inclined to think that sooner or later we shall have to adopt it.”

Huxley’s Death in 1895

On June 29, 1895, at the age of 70, Huxley died of a heart attack (after contracting influenza and pneumonia), survived by his wife, who lived several more decades and was able to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 1909.

Huxley was buried in North London at St. Marylebone (now East Finchley) Cemetery, in a small family plot that he had bought when his first son, Noel, died of scarlet fever in 1860; Huxley's wife is also buried there. No one was invited to the burial, but two hundred people turned up, including such notables as Joseph Hooker, Joseph Lister, and Henry James.

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871)

This two-volume work is considered Darwin’s second great book on evolution. It is really two works printed together: a book about the evolution of humans (The Descent of Man, 7 chapters) and a longer book (Selection in Relation to Sex, 14 chapters) about sexual selection.

When the manuscript was presented to the publisher, John Murray, Darwin was asked to remove one passage only – a passage that suggested that females could enjoy sex – a no-no for the Victorian Age.

Arguments in The Descent of Man

Although the fact of evolution seemed to indicate that humans were part of the animal world, mostly closely related to apes like the chimpanzees and gorillas, many scientists (notably, Alfred Russel Wallace) did not believe the human mind could have evolved from ancestors common to humans and apes. Darwin’s book was intended to address this, by showing that supposedly purely human faculties (moral reasoning, sympathy towards others, appreciation of beauty and music, etc.) were to be seen in other animals, notably apes, albeit not as highly developed as in humans.

These are embryos, at an early stage of development, of eight different animals.

In alphabetical order, they are chicken, cow, fish, humans, pig, rabbit, salamander, and tortoise.

Can you tell which is which?

The same embryos at a later stage of development.

The Problem of Human Races

Many 19th century scientists considered different races to be different species of humans. In particular, African blacks were a different species which some Englishmen considered closer to apes than to Europeans.

Darwin felt humans constituted only one species, and that racial differences (skin color and hair texture) were superficial differences: persons belonging to different races were simply variants.

Today, DNA studies show that Darwin was correct.

Darwin correctly surmised that humans originated in Africa.

Current family tree of hominids

The last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees was about 5 to 7 million years ago.

Anatomically and behaviorally modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago.

Sexual Selection

Darwin defined sexual selection (first mentioned in On the Origin of Species) as the selection of certain traits by competition between members of a species, the “struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex.”

“Sexual selection depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex, in relation to the propagation of the species; whilst natural selection depends on the success of both sexes, at all ages, in relation to the general conditions of life. …

Sexual Selection (continued)

“The sexual struggle is of two kinds; in the one it is between individuals of the same sex, generally the males, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; whilst in the other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners. This latter kind of selection is closely analogous to that which man unintentionally, yet effectually, brings to bear on his domesticated productions, when he preserves during a long period the most pleasing or useful individuals, without any wish to modify the breed.”

Indian blue peacock

An albino peacock – selected against because very visible to predators and not attractive to female mates.

Stalk-eyed fly (fly family Diopsidae)

Many of Darwin’s contemporaries considered the theory of sexual selection to be ridiculous. Alfred Russel Wallace considered it one of his great accomplishments in evolutionary theory to have disproved the “female choice” aspect of the theory.

In the late 1960s, however, biologists resuscitated the theory and carried out some experiments which definitely proved that sexual selection did occur. Today, Darwin’s theory is generally accepted as correct, but not by everyone.

Long-tailed Widowbirds (Birds of Stanford, 1988)

“There is evidence that female birds of some species (e.g., Marsh Wrens, Red-winged Blackbirds) tend to choose as mates those males holding the most desirable territories. In contrast, there is surprisingly little evidence that females preferentially select males with different degrees of ornamentation. One of the most interesting studies involved Long-tailed Widowbirds living in a grassland on a plateau in Kenya. Males of this polygynous six-inch weaver (a distant relative of the House Sparrow) are black with red and buff on their shoulders and have tails about sixteen inches long. The tails are prominently exhibited as the male flies slowly in aerial display over his territory. This can be seen from more than half a mile away. The females, in contrast, have short tails and are inconspicuous. …

Long-tailed Widowbirds (Birds of Stanford, 1988)

“Nine matched foursomes of territorial widowbird males were captured and randomly given the following treatments. One of each set had his tail cut about six inches from the base, and the feathers removed were then glued to the corresponding feathers of another male, thus extending that bird's tail by some ten inches. A small piece of each feather was glued back on the tail of the donor, so that the male whose tail was shortened was subjected to the same series of operations, including gluing, as the male whose tail was lengthened. A third male had his tail cut, but the feathers were then glued back so that the tail was not noticeably shortened. The fourth bird was only banded. …

Long-tailed Widowbirds (Birds of Stanford, 1988)

“Thus the last two birds served as experimental controls whose appearance had not been changed, but which had been subjected to capture, handling, and (in one) cutting and gluing. To test whether the manipulations had affected the behavior of the males, numbers of display flights and territorial encounters were counted for periods both before and after capture and release. No significant differences in rates of flight or encounter were found. …”

Long-tailed Widowbirds (Birds of Stanford, 1988)

“The mating success of the males was measured by counting the number of nests containing eggs or young in each male's territory. Before the start of the experiment the males showed no significant differences in mating success. But after the large differences in tail length were artificially created, great differentials appeared in the number of new active nests in each territory. The males whose tails were lengthened acquired the most new mates (as indicated by new nests), outnumbering those of both of the controls and the males whose tails were shortened. The latter had the smallest number of new active nests. The females, therefore, preferred to mate with the males having the longest tails.”

Sexual Selection at work among humans!

1872

In 1872 Darwin published the 6th and last edition of The Origin of Species – the only major revision – and a new book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

The 6th edition of The Origin of Species is usually not preferred to the first edition. Much of it is taken up with Darwin’s attempts to answer critics and to try to come up with explanations for which he had no observational or experimental evidence.

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

This is often considered the fourth great book by Darwin, along with Voyage of the Beagle, On the Origin of Species, and The Descent of Man. It has many illustrations of people and animals displaying various emotions. This subject had interested Darwin ever since the birth of his first child in 1839. This book is essentially the beginning of the discipline of evolutionary psychology.

1874

In January, a spiritualist séance was held at the home of his brother Erasmus. Charles, Emma, and Etty attended, along with George Eliot and her partner G. H. Lewes – the latter, like Charles, very skeptical. Charles, who found it hot and tiring, left “before all these astounding miracles, or jugglery, took place… The Lord have mercy on us all, if we have to believe in such rubbish.” One of Emma’s nieces thought Darwin was not very open in this matter, and Emma, more open to spiritualism, wrote to her that “he is a regular bigot.”

During the year Darwin published second editions of The Descent of Man and of his monograph on coral reefs.

1875

Darwin published Insectivorous Plants in 1875. It had the shortest title of any of his books – just two words.

On November 3 he appeared before the Royal Commission on Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments, stating that he was not a physiologist and had never performed an experiment on a live animal, but believed that prohibiting such experiments “would be a very great evil.” He favored the use of anesthetics whenever possible in such an experiment, and believed that it would nearly always be possible to use anesthetics.

1876

During the summer of 1876 Darwin began to write an autobiography for his children and future grandchildren.

“I know that it would have interested me greatly to have read even so short and dull a sketch of the mind of my grandfather written by himself, and what he thought and did, and how he worked.”

In September Darwin’s first grandchild, Bernard Darwin (who became a golfer and golf writer), was born to Francis and Amy Darwin. Amy died in childbirth and Francis and the baby came to live with his parents at Down House. Francis became Darwin’s secretary and botanical assistant and, after his father’s death, published his autobiography and letters.

March 11, 1877 – Visit from Gladstone

On March 11, 1877, Darwin was paid a visit by several notables who walked over from the home of John Lubbock, Lord Avebury, who was a Liberal M.P. They included William Gladstone, Huxley, Lyon Playfair, Lubbock, and John Morley (who had reviewed The Descent of Man). Morley wrote in his diary that Gladstone had bored everyone for two hours by reading aloud from the proofs of his latest pamphlet on Turkey, and that Darwin and the others couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Consequently, unsurprisingly, Gladstone had felt that Darwin was not a particularly good conversationalist. Darwin, however, was ecstatic at having met such a great man. Gladstone did ask Darwin if he thought America would in the future play a greater role in the world than Europe, and Darwin had answered in the affirmative.

Another book

In July 1877 Darwin, with the assistance of his son Francis, published The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species. This was a very technical monograph describing what happened when mating occurred between flowers of exactly the same king and when mating occurred between different flowers.

In 1878, 1879, and 1881 Francis paid visits of a few months each to the laboratory of the experimental botanist, Julius Sachs, near Würzburg, learning about the first-class scientific equipment and procedures employed by Sachs. He tried unsuccessfully to convince his father he needed new equipment at Down House – but Darwin preferred to make do with simpler equipment and ingenuity.

The Bradlaugh – Besant Scandal

In early 1877 the noted atheist author Charles Bradlaugh and the sexual freethinker Annie Besant published a pamphlet on contraception, touted as a solution to over-population problems. They were arrested and charged with obscenity, and Bradlaugh wrote to Darwin seeking his support, thinking Darwin would be likely to agree with his ideas. No!

“I have not seen the book in question but for notices in the newspaper. I suppose that it refers to means to prevent conception. If so I should be forced to express in court a very decided opinion in opposition to you & Mrs. Besant. … I believe that any such practices would in time lead to unsound women and would destroy chastity, on which the family bond depends; & the weakening of this bond would be the greatest of all possible evils to mankind.”

1877

On November 17, 1877 Darwin was awarded an honorary LLD degree from Cambridge University. Darwin had his distinctive long white beard and a magnificent red cloak, and was accompanied by Emma. There was a large crowd present, including raucous undergraduates, who dangled a monkey below which was a large ribboned ring, presumably the “missing link.”

From notes he had taken 1839 – 1841 on his first child, William Darwin, he published an article entitled “A Biographical Sketch of an Infant” in the journal new psychological journal Mind, after reading an article by Hippolyte Taine about his daughter’s first 18 months.

Mr. Rich

In 1878 a wealthy bachelor lawyer named Anthony Rich, saying he greatly admired Darwin, wrote to him that he planned to leave his whole fortune to Darwin. Darwin was not sure that this was not a practical joke by someone, so he asked Huxley to go visit Mr. Rich and check on him. Huxley found Mr. Rich to be respectable, liberal, interested in science, and childless, living in a very fine home. Darwin then met with Rich and tried unsuccessfully to talk him out of his plan, as he was already well-off, but he finally agreed to let Mr. Rich leave his fortune to Darwin’s sons (which is what happened, after Rich outlived Darwin). Mr. Rich was also impressed by Huxley and left him his house, the one Huxley had admired.

1879

In 1879 Darwin published a translation (by W. S. Dallas) of a biography of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, written in German by Ernst Krause, “With a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin.”

This led to an attack by Samuel Butler (the author of Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh, grandson of Darwin’s old headmaster at Shrewsbury, Dr. Samuel Butler) because the English translation contained some materials not in Krause’s German original, materials that Butler thought had been plagiarized from his recent book, Evolution Old and New, which criticized Darwin and said his ideas came from Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck.

In Evolution Old and New, Samuel Butler wrote;

“Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck watered, but it was Mr. Darwin who said ‘That fruit is ripe’ and shook it into his lap.”

Darwin, his family, and his friends discussed Butler’s surprisingly vicious attacks and decided it would be best not to respond. There is a long discussion of this incident in an Appendix to Darwin’s Autobiography.

Butler wrote several books on evolution, espousing ideas (like teleological evolution) that are not accepted today. Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh are better books.

The Servants at Down House

The Darwins typically had six to twelve servants, including a butler (Joseph Parslow, who retired in 1875 and died in 1898), a head gardener, a coachman, a groom, a footman, a cook (the same one nearly 30 years), housemaids, a lady’s maid, a parlourmaid, a laundry maid, etc.

It was apparently a happy household: many servants stayed with the Darwins for decades, enjoying working for them.

Comments by servants …

John Lubbock once asked the gardener about Darwin’s health, and was told: “Oh! My poor master has been very sadly. I often wish he had something to do. He moons about in the garden, and I have seen him stand doing nothing before a flower for ten minutes at a time. If he only had something to do I really believe he would be better.”

Darwin’s grandson Bernard (the golfer and golf writer) remembered a new nurse saying, “It’s a pity that Mr. Darwin hasn’t something to do like Mr. Thackeray. I’ve seen him watch an ant-heap for a whole hour.”

1880: Another book

In November 1880 Darwin published The Power of Movement in Plants, based on his own observations and experiments, mostly in his own greenhouse. His son Francis had helped with the work and in writing the book, and had unsuccessfully tried to get his father to use more modern scientific equipment like Julian Sachs in Germany, with whom Francis had worked.

Darwin’s work was partly correct, but some of his experiments could not be reproduced, and Sachs thought poorly of Darwin’s work.

1881

In August 1881, Darwin’s older brother Erasmus died, and was buried in the Downe churchyard.

The same year Darwin – active to the end of his life - published his last – and apparently best-selling – book: The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits.

Other activities: Gave money to Kew Gardens for publication of the Index Kewensis; arranged a civil list pension for Wallace; defended the right of scientists to experiment on live animals.

The Earthworm Book

After writing his book on earthworms, Darwin took the manuscript in person to his publisher, John Murray, not knowing if it was worth publishing or if Murray would be interested in it. According to Murray, Darwin said something like: “Here is a work which has occupied me for many years and interested me much. I fear the subject of it will not attract the public, but will you publish it for me?”

Murray probably also had his doubts, so it was a surprise to everyone concerned that it became Darwin’s most popular book, selling much faster than any of his other works, and bringing him a lot of attention.

“I am driven almost frantic by the number of letters about worms; but amidst much rubbish there are some good facts & suggestions,” Darwin wrote.

In April 1881 Darwin wrote to Professor Holmgren at Uppsala (Sweden) with his views on vivisection, which was being discussed in Sweden. An excerpt:

“I have all my life been a strong advocate for humanity to animals, and have done what I could in my writings to enforce this duty. Several years ago, when the agitation against physiologists commenced in England, it was asserted that inhumanity was here practised and useless suffering caused to animals; and I was led to think that it might be advisable to have an Act of Parliament on the subject. …

1881 Letter to Professor Holmgren, continued …

“I then took an active part in trying to get a Bill passed, such as would have removed all just cause of complaint, and at the same time have left physiologists free to pursue their researches—a Bill very different from the Act which has since been passed. It is right to add that the investigation of the matter by a Royal Commission proved that the accusations made against our English physiologists were false. From all that I have heard, however, I fear that in some parts of Europe little regard is paid to the sufferings of animals, and if this be the case I should be glad to hear of legislation against inhumanity in any such country. …

1881 Letter to Professor Holmgren concluded ….

“On the other hand, I know that physiology cannot possibly progress except by means of experiments on living animals, and I feel the deepest conviction that he who retards the progress of physiology commits a crime against mankind. Any one who remembers, as I can, the state of this science half a century ago must admit that it has made immense progress, and it is now progressing at an ever-increasing rate.”

1882 – Darwin’s Last Year

Early 1882: Darwin is weaker and can hardly work at all, but manages to write a few papers.

One day, feeling better, he went to visit George Romanes, who was not home, and suffered a heart attack. The butler, seeing that Darwin looked ill, tried to get him to come in. But Darwin insisted on going back home alone, taking a cab. He recovered, but in March suffered another heart attack. The end approached when he had another on April 15, and went to bed for good.

The last photograph taken of Charles Darwin

The Death of Charles Darwin

Darwin died at Down House on 19 April 1882, at the age of 73.

Darwin’s final words, to his wife Emma, as reported by his daughter Henrietta (who was present):

Remember what a good wife you have been.

Although he had asked to be buried at Down House, and Emma and the children favored that, he was instead buried at Westminster Abbey in London on 26 April 1882. Thomas Henry Huxley, one of the pallbearers, later regretted this when he found out Darwin had asked to be buried at Down House.

Funeral of Charles Darwin in Westminster Abbey

Darwin’s Last Paper

Darwin’s last paper is a nice example of his writing style, and while at first it does not appear to be particularly important or interesting, it has a fascinating sequel.

The article, entitled “On the dispersal of freshwater bivalves,” appeared in the April 6, 1882 issue of Nature – just days before Darwin’s death.

ON THE DISPERSAL OF FRESHWATER BIVALVES

“The wide distribution of the same species, and of closely-allied species of freshwater shells must have surprised every one who has attended to this subject. A naturalist, when he collects for the first time freshwater animals in a distant region, is astonished at their general similarity to those of his native European home, in comparison with the surrounding terrestrial animals and plants. Hence I was led to publish in Nature (vol. xviii. p. 120) a letter to me from Mr. A. H. Gray, of Danversport, Massachusetts, in which he gives a drawing of a living shell of Unio complanatus, attached to the tip of the middle toe of a duck (Querquedula discors) shot on the wing. The toe had been pinched so hard by the shell that it was indented and abraded. If the bird had not been killed, it would have alighted on some pool, and the Unio would no doubt sooner or later have relaxed its hold and dropped off. It is not likely that such cases should often be observed, for a bird when shot would generally fall on the ground so heavily that an attached shell would be shaken off and overlooked.Mr. F. Norgate,2 of Sparham, near Norwich, in a letter dated March 8, 1881, informs me that the larger water-beetles and newts in his aquarium "frequently have one foot caught by a small freshwater bivalve (Cyclas cornea ?), and this makes them swim about in a very restless state, day and night, for several days, until the foot or toe is completely severed." He adds that newts migrate at night from pond to pond, and can cross over obstacles which would be thought to be considerable. Lastly, my son Francis, while fishing in the sea off the shores of North Wales, noticed that mussels were several times brought up by the point of the hook; and though he did not particularly attend to the subject, he and his companion thought that the shells had not been mechanically torn from the bottom, but that they had seized the point of the hook. A friend also of Mr. Crick's tells him that while fishing in rapid streams he has often thus caught small Unios. From the several cases now given, there can, I think, be no doubt that living bivalve shells must often be carried from pond to pond, and by the aid of birds occasionally even to great distances. I have also suggested in the "Origin of Species" means by which freshwater univalve shells might be far transported.3 We may therefore demur to the belief doubtfully expressed by Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys in his "British Conchology,' namely, that the diffusion of freshwater shells "had a different and very remote origin, and that it took place before the present distribution of land and water."4

“I am now able to add, through the kindness of Mr. W. D. Crick, of Northampton, another and different case. On February 18 of the present year, he caught a female Dytiscus marginalis [the great diving beetle], with a shell of Cyclas cornea clinging to the tarsus of its middle leg. The shell was .45 of an inch from end to end, .3 in depth, and weighed (as Mr. Crick informs me) .39 grams, or 6 grains. The valves clipped only the extremity of the tarsus for a length of .1 of an inch. Nevertheless, the shell did not drop off, on the beetle when caught shaking its leg violently. The specimen was brought home in a handkerchief, and placed after about three hours in water, and the shell remained attached from February 18 to 23, when it dropped off, being still alive, and so remained for about a fortnight while in my possession.

“Shortly after the shell had detached itself, the beetle dived to the bottom of the vessel in which it had been placed, and having inserted its antennæ between the valves, was again caught for a few minutes. The species of Dytiscus often fly at night, and no doubt they generally alight on any pool of water which they may see; and I have several times heard of their having dashed down on glass cucumber frames, no doubt mistaking the glittering surface for water. I do not suppose that the above weight of 6 grains would prevent so powerful an insect as a Dytiscus from taking flight. Anyhow this beetle could transport smaller individuals; and a single one would stock any isolated pond, as the species is an hermaphrodite form.

“Mr. Crick tells me that a shell of the same kind, and of about the same size, which he kept in water ‘extruded two young ones, which seemed very active and able to take care of themselves.’ How far a Dytiscus could fly is not known; but during the voyage of the Beagle a closely-allied form, namely, a Colymbetes, flew on board when the nearest point of land was forty-five miles distant; and it is an improbable chance that it had flown from the nearest point.

“Mr. Crick visited the same pond a fortnight afterwards, and found on the bank a frog which appeared to have been lately killed; and to the outer toe of one of its hind legs a living shell of the same species was attached. The shell was rather smaller than in the previous case. The leg was cut off and kept in water for two days, during which time the shell remained attached. The leg was then left in the air, but soon became shrivelled; and now the shell being still alive detached itself.”

Who was “Mr. W. D. Crick, of Northampton”?

His full name was Walter Drawbridge Crick, and he lived from 1857 to 1903. He was a shoe manufacturer who was also an amateur geologist and palaeontologist.

He was the grandfather of Francis Crick (1916 – 2004), Nobel-Prize-winning co-discoverer (with James Watson) of the double-helix structure of DNA.

Darwin on His Religious Belief“Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished, – is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, would he permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament. This appeared to me utterly incredible. …

“By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, – that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, – that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, – that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events – that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; – by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories. …

“But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; – I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.

“And this is a damnable doctrine. …

“Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusion to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. …

“At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons. But it cannot be doubted that Hindoos, Mahomadans and others might argue in the same manner and with equal force in favour of the existence of one God, or of many Gods, or as with the Buddists of no God. There are also many barbarian tribes who cannot be said with any truth to believe in what we call God: they believe indeed in spirits or ghosts, and it can be explained, as Tyler and Herbert Spencer have shown, how such a belief would be likely to arise. …

“That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have attempted to explain this in reference to man by imagining that it serves for his moral improvement. But the number of men in the world is as nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral improvement. A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the suffering of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as just remarked, the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection. …

“Nothing is more remarkable than the spread of scepticism or rationalism during the latter half of my life. Before I was engaged to be married, my father advised me to conceal carefully my doubts, for he said that he had known extreme misery thus caused with married persons. Things went on pretty well until the wife or husband became out of health, and then some women suffered miserably by doubting about the salvation of their husbands, thus making them likewise to suffer. My father added that he had known during his whole long life only three women who were sceptics; and it should be remembered that he knew well a multitude of persons and possessed extraordinary power of winning confidence. When I asked him who the three women were, he had to own with respect to one of them, his sister-in-law Kitty Wedgwood, that he had no good evidence, only the vaguest hints, aided by the conviction that so clear-sighted a woman could not be a believer.”

A Death-Bed Conversion?

1915: Appearance in print in an evangelical Christian publication of the “Lady Hope Article,” in which a Lady Hope claimed to have spoken to Darwin shortly before his death, and found that he had renounced his theory of evolution and expressed his belief in Christianity.

This was a hoax. Those present on Darwin’s last day say nothing of the sort happened, and Lady Hope was not there anyway, and if she had been one of the many who visited Down House while Darwin was alive, he could not have said anything of the sort.

Agnosticism

Thomas Henry Huxley was reluctant to call himself an atheist because he was convinced the non-existence of God was unproveable. So he invented the word “agnostic” to describe someone who didn’t know whether God existed or not, yet doubted that he did. He applied the word to himself and to Darwin, as well as many of his friends.

Darwin accepted this characterization. In his autobiography, he wrote:“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.”