Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley Part 5

Roger Bacon. Ilchester, 1214. 1292 First English Experimentalist.

Christopher Genoa, 1445. 1506 Discoverer of America, Columbus. 1492.

Vasco de Gama. Sines, 1469. 1525 Sailed round the South (Portugal.) of Africa, 1497.

Ferdinand Magellan. Ville de 1521 Circ.u.mnavigator of Sabroza, 1470. the Globe, 1519.

Nicholas Copernicus. Thorn, 1473. 1543 Discoverer of the Sun (Prussia.) as the Centre of our System.

Andreas Vesalius. Brussels, 1514. 1564 Human Anatomist.

Conrad Gesner. Zurich, 1516. 1565 Cla.s.sification of Plants and Animals.

Andrew Caesalpino. Arezzo, 1519. 1603 Comparative Botanist.

(Tuscany.) Tycho Brahe. Knudstrup, 1601 Collector of 1546. Astronomical Data.

(Sweden.) Giordano Bruno. Nola, 1550. 1600 Expounder of the Copernican System and Philosopher.

Francis, Lord Bacon. London, 1561. 1626 Expounder of the Inductive Philosophy.

Galileo Galilei. Pisa, 1564. 1642 Numerous Astronomical Discoveries.

Johann Kepler. Wurtemburg, 1630 Discoverer of the 1571. Three Laws of Planetary Movements.

Thomas Hobbes. Malmesbury, 1679 One of the Founders 1588. of Modern Ethics.

Rene Descartes. La Haye, 1596. 1650 Resolution of all (Touraine.) Phenomena into Terms of Matter and Motion.

(Dualism.) Benedict Spinoza. Amsterdam, 1677 Resolution of all 1632. Phenomena into Terms of Substance=G.o.d.

(Monism.) John Locke. Wrington, 1632. 1704 Moral Philosopher.

(Somerset.) Gottfrid Wilhelm Leipsic, 1646. 1716 Philosopher and Leibnitz. Mathematician.

Sir Isaac Newton. Woolsthorpe, 1727 Expounder of the Law 1642. of Gravitation.

(Lincoln.) Edmund Halley. London, 1656. 1741 Astronomer.

David Hartley. Illingworth, 1757 Psychology of Man.

1705. Carl von Linnaeus. Roeshult, 1707. 1778 Systematic Botany and (Sweden.) Zoology.

Count de Buffon. Burgundy, 1788 Contributions from 1707. Biology toward Theory of Evolution and Geology.

David Hume. Edinburgh, 1776 Philosophy of the Anti-supernatural; 1711. all Science Converging in Man.

Immanuel Kant. Konigsberg, 1804 Formulator of the 1724. Nebular Theory.

James Hutton. Edinburgh, 1797 Geologist: 1726. Uniformitarian.

Erasmus Darwin. Elton, 1731. 1802 (_See_ BUFFON.) (Lincolns.h.i.+re.) Sir William Hanover, 1738. 1822 Astronomer.

Herschel. Jean Baptiste Bazantium, 1829 Biologist: Contributions Lamarck. 1744. against fixity of Species.

Marquis de Laplace. Beaumont-en-Ange, 1827 Expounder of the 1749. Nebular Theory.

Conrad Sprengel. Pomerania, 1833 Botanist.

1766. John Dalton. Eaglesfield, 1844 Formulator of the 1767. Modern Atomic (c.u.mberland.) Theory.

Baron Cuvier. Montbeliard, 1832 Palaeontologist and 1769. Anatomist.

Geoff. St. Hilaire. Etampes, 1772. 1844 Zoologist.

Alexander von Berlin, 1769. 1859 Explorer.

Humboldt. William Smith. Churchill, 1769. 1840 Geologist: mapped (Oxon.) Strata of Great Britain.

Boucher de Perthes. 1788. 1868 Discoverer of Evidences of Man's Antiquity.

Sir William Hooker. Norwich, 1785. 1865 Botanist.

Sir Charles Lyell. Kinnordy, 1875 Geologist: developed 1797. Hutton's Theory.

(Forfars.h.i.+re.) Ernst von Baer. Esthonia, 1792. 1876 Embryologist: Law of Organic Development.

Sir Richard Owen. Lancaster, 1804. 1892 Palaeontologist.

Hugo von Mohl. Germany, 1805. 1872 Discoverer of Protoplasm.

Theodor Schwann. Neuss, 1810. 1882 Founder of the Cell (Prussia.) Theory.

Hermann von Potsdam, 1821. 1894 Formulator of the Helmholtz. Doctrine of the Conservation of Energy.

_PART IV._

MODERN EVOLUTION.

1. _Darwin and Wallace._

We have to deal with Man as a product of Evolution; with Society as a product of Evolution; and with Moral Phenomena as products of Evolution.--HERBERT SPENCER, Principles of Ethics, -- 193.

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN (the second name was rarely used by him) was born at Shrewsbury on the 12th of February, 1809. He came of a long line of Lincolns.h.i.+re yeomen, whose forbears spelt the name variously, as Darwen, Derwent, and Darwynne, perhaps deriving it from the river of kindred name. His father was a kindly, prosperous doctor, of sufficient scientific reputation to secure his election into the Royal Society, although that coveted honour was then more easily obtained than now. Of the more famous grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, the reminder suffices that both his prose and poetry were vehicles of suggestive speculations on the development of life-forms. Dealing with bald facts and dates for clearance of what follows, it may be added that Charles Darwin was educated at the Grammar School of his native town; that he pa.s.sed thence to Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities; was occupied as volunteer naturalist on board the Beagle from December, 1831, till October, 1836; that he published his epoch-making Origin of Species in November, 1859; and that he was buried by the side of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey on the 26th of April, 1882.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Alfred R. Wallace]

As with not a few other men of "light and leading," neither school nor university did much for him, nor did his boyhood give indication of future greatness. In his answers to the series of questions addressed to various scientific men in 1873 by his distinguished cousin, Francis Galton, he says: "I consider that all I have learnt of any value has been self-taught," and he adds that his education fostered no methods of observation or reasoning. Of the Shrewsbury Grammar School, where, after the death of his mother (daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the celebrated potter), in his ninth year, he was placed as a boarder till his sixteenth year, he tells us, in the modest and candid Autobiography printed in the Life and Letters, "nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind." All that he was taught were the cla.s.sics, and a little ancient geography and history; no mathematics, and no modern languages. Happily, he had inherited a taste for natural history and for collecting, his spoils including not only sh.e.l.ls and plants, but also coins and seals. When the fact that he helped his brother in chemical experiments became known to Dr. Butler, the head-master, that desiccated pedagogue publicly rebuked him "for wasting time on such useless subjects." Then his father, angry at finding that he was doing no good at school, reproved him for caring for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and declared that he would be a disgrace to the family! He sent him to Edinburgh University with his brother to study medicine, but Darwin found the dulness of the lectures intolerable, and the sight of blood sickened him, as it did his father. Although the effect of the "incredibly" dry lectures on geology made him--the future Secretary of the Geological Society!--vow never to read a book on the science, or in any way study it, his interest in biological subjects grew, and its first fruits were shown in a paper read before the Plinian Society at Edinburgh in 1826, in which he reported his discovery that the so-called ova of _Fl.u.s.tra_, or the sea-mat, were larvae.

But his father had to accept the fact that Darwin disliked the idea of being a doctor, and fearing that he would degenerate into an idle sporting man, proposed that he should become a clergyman! Darwin says upon this:--

I asked for some time to consider, as from what little I had heard or thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England, though otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed, and a few other books on divinity; and, as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our creed must be fully accepted. Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox, it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman. Nor was this intention and my father's wish ever formally given up, but died a natural death when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined the Beagle as naturalist. If the phrenologists are to be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect to be a clergyman. A few years ago the secretaries of a German psychological society asked me earnestly by letter for a photograph of myself; and some time afterwards I received the proceedings of one of the meetings, in which it seemed that the shape of my head had been the subject of a public discussion, and one of the speakers declared that I had the b.u.mp of reverence developed enough for ten priests.

The result was that early in 1828 Darwin went to Cambridge, the three years spent at which were "time wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned." His pa.s.sion for shooting and hunting led him into a sporting, card-playing, drinking company, but science was his redemption. No pursuit gave him so much pleasure as collecting beetles, of his zeal in which the following is an example: "One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one."

Happily for his future career, and therefore for the interests of science, Darwin became intimate with men like Whewell, Henslow, and Sedgwick, while the reading of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, and of Sir John Herschel's Introduction to Natural Philosophy, stirred up in him "a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the n.o.ble structure of Natural Science." The vow to eschew geology was quickly broken when he came under the spell of Sedgwick's influence, but it was the friends.h.i.+p of Henslow that determined his after career, and prevented him from becoming the "Rev. Charles Darwin." For on his return from a geological tour in Wales with Sedgwick he found a letter from Henslow awaiting him, the purport of which is in the following extract:--

"I have been asked by Peac.o.c.k (Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge) to recommend him a naturalist as companion to Captain Fitz-Roy, employed by Government to survey the southern extremity of America. I have stated that I consider you to be the best-qualified person I know of who is likely to undertake such a situation."

In connection with this the following memorandum from Darwin's pocket-book of 1831 is of interest:--"Returned to Shrewsbury at end of August. Refused offer of voyage."

This refusal was given at the instance of his father, who objected to the scheme as "wild and unsettling, and as disreputable to his character as a clergyman"; but he soon yielded on the advice of his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, and on Darwin's plea that he "should be deuced clever to spend more than his allowance whilst on board the Beagle." On this his father answered with a smile, "But they tell me you are very clever." It is amusing to find that Darwin narrowly escaped being rejected by Fitz-Roy, who, as a disciple of Lavater, doubted whether a man with such a nose as Darwin's "could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage."

The details of that voyage, the first of the two memorable events in Darwin's otherwise unadventurous life, are set down in delightful narrative in his Naturalist's Voyage Round the World, and it will suffice to quote a pa.s.sage from the autobiography bearing on the significance of the materials collected during his five years' absence.

During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil animals covered with armour like that on the existing armadillos; secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards over the continent; and thirdly, by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group, none of the islands appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense. It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually became modified; and the subject haunted me. But it was equally evident that "none of the evolutionary theories then current in the scientific world" could account for the innumerable cases in which organisms of every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits of life.... I had always been much struck by such adaptations, and until these could be explained, it seemed to me almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect evidence that species have been modified.... In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amus.e.m.e.nt Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observations of the habits of plants and animals, it at once struck me that under these circ.u.mstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.

Shortly after his return he settled in London, prepared his journal and ma.n.u.scripts of observations for publication, and opened, he says, under date of July, 1837, "my first note-book for facts in relation to the origin of species, about which I had long reflected, and never ceased working for the next twenty years." He acted for two years as one of the honorary secretaries of the Geological Society, which brought him into close relations with Lyell, and, as his health then allowed him to go into society, he saw a good deal of prominent literary and scientific contemporaries.

In the autumn of 1842, two years and eight months after his marriage with his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, who died in October last (1896), Darwin removed from London, the air and social demands of which were alike unsuited to his health, and finally fixed upon a house in the secluded village of Down, near Beckenham, where he spent the rest of his days. Henceforth the life of Darwin is merged in the books in which, from time to time, he gave the result of his long years of patient observation and inquiry, from the epoch-making Origin to the monograph on earthworms. With bad health, apparently due to gouty tendencies aggravated by chronic sea-sickness during his voyage; with nights that never gave unbroken sleep; and days that were never pa.s.sed without prostrating pain; he might well have felt justified in doing nothing whatever. But he was saved from the accursed monotony of a wealthy invalid's life by his insatiate delight in searching for that solution of the problem of the mutability of species which time would not fail to bring. In this, he tells us, he forgot his "daily discomfort," and thus was delivered from morbid introspection.

Darwin worked at his rough notes on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, adding facts collected by "printed enquiries, by conversations with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading," gleams of light coming till he says that he is "almost convinced that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable." But he was still groping in the dark as to the application of selection to wild plants and animals, until, as remarked above, the chance reading of Malthus suggested a working theory. A brief sketch of this theory, written out in pencil in 1842, was elaborated in 1844 into an essay of two hundred and thirty pages. The importance attached to this was shown in a letter which Darwin then addressed to his wife, charging her, in the event of his death, to apply 400 to the expense of publication. He also named certain competent men from whom an editor might be chosen, preference being given to Sir Charles (then Mr. Lyell, at whose advice Darwin began to write out his views on a scale three or four times as extensive as that in which they appeared in the Origin of Species.) Their publication in an abstract form was hastened by the receipt, in June, 1858, of a paper, containing "exactly the same theory," from Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace at Ternate in the Moluccas. This reference to that distinguished explorer, will, before the story of the coincident discovery is further told, fitly introduce a sketch of his career.

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE was born at Usk, in Monmouths.h.i.+re, on the 8th of January, 1823. He was educated at Hereford Grammar School, and in his fourteenth year began the study of land-surveying and architecture under an elder brother. Quick-witted and observing, he studied a great deal more on his own account in his journeyings over England and Wales, the results of which abide in the wide range of subjects--scientific, political, and social--engaging his active pen from early manhood to the present day.

About 1844 he exchanged the theodolite for the ferule, and became English master in the Collegiate School at Leicester, in which town he found a congenial friend in the person of his future fellow-traveller, Henry Walter Bates. Bates was then employed in his father's hosiery warehouse, from which he escaped, as often as the long working hours then prevailing allowed, into the fields with his collecting-box. Both schoolmaster and shopman were ardent naturalists, Mr. Wallace, as he tells us, being at that time "chiefly interested in botany," but he afterward took up his friend's favourite pursuit of entomology. The writer, when preparing his memoir of Bates (which prefaces a reprint of the first edition of the delightful Naturalist on the Amazons), learned from Mr. Wallace that in early life he did not keep letters from Bates and other correspondents. But, fortunately, among Bates's papers, there was a bundle of interesting letters from Wallace written between June, 1845, and October, 1847, from Neath, in South Wales, to which town he had removed. In one of these, dated the 9th of November, 1845, Wallace asks Bates if he had read the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and a subsequent letter indicates that Bates had not formed a favourable opinion of the book. A later letter is interesting as conveying an estimate of Darwin. "I first," Wallace says, "read Darwin's Journal three or four years back, and have lately re-read it. As the journal of a scientific traveller, it is second only to Humboldt's Personal Narrative; as a work of general interest, perhaps supporter to it. He is an ardent admirer and most able supporter of Mr. Lyell's views. His style of writing I very much admire, so free from all labour, affectation, or egotism, yet so full of interest and original thought."

But, of still greater moment, is a letter in which Wallace tells Bates that he begins "to feel dissatisfied with a mere local collection. I should like to take some one family to study thoroughly, princ.i.p.ally with a view to the theory of the origin of species." The two friends had often discussed schemes for going abroad to explore some virgin region, nor could their scanty means prevent the fulfilment of a scheme which has enriched both science and the literature of travel. The choice of country to explore was settled by Wallace's perusal of a little book ent.i.tled A Voyage up the River Amazons, including a Residence in Para, by W. H. Edwards, an American tourist, published in Murray's Family Library, in 1847. In the autumn of that year Wallace proposed a joint expedition to the river Amazons for the purpose of exploring the Natural History of its banks; the plan being to make a collection of objects, dispose of the duplicates in London to pay expenses, and gather facts, as Mr. Wallace expressed it in one of his letters, "towards solving the problem of the origin of species."

The choice was a happy one, for, except by the German zoologist Von Spix, and the botanist Von Martius in 1817-20, and subsequently by Count de Castelnau, no exploration of a region so rich and interesting to the biologist had been attempted. Early in 1848 Bates and Wallace met in London to study South American animals and plants in the princ.i.p.al collections, and afterward went to Chatsworth to gain information about orchids, which they proposed to collect in the moist tropical forests and send home.

On 26th of April, 1848, they embarked at Liverpool in a barque of only 192 tons burden, one of the few s.h.i.+ps then trading to Para, to which seaport of the Amazons region a swift pa.s.sage, "straight as an arrow,"

brought them on 28th of May.

The travellers soon settled in a _rocinha_, or country-house, a mile and half from Para, and close to the forest, which came down to their doors.

Like other towns along the Amazons, Para stands on ground cleared from the forest that stretches, a well-nigh pathless jungle of luxuriant primeval vegetation, two thousand miles inland. In that paradise of the naturalist, the collectors gathered consignments which met with ready sale in London, and thus spent a couple of years in pursuits moderately remunerative and wholly pleasurable, till, on reaching Barra, at the mouth of the Rio Negro, one thousand miles from Para, in March, 1850, Bates and Wallace, who was accompanied by his younger brother, parted company, "finding it more convenient to explore separate districts and collect independently." Wallace took the northern parts and tributaries of the Amazons, and Bates kept to the main stream, which, from the direction it seems to take at the fork of the Rio Negro, is called the Upper Amazons or the Solimoens. Different in character and climatic conditions from the Lower Amazons, it flows through a "vast plain about a thousand miles in length, and five hundred or six hundred miles in breadth covered with one uniform, lofty, impervious, and humid forest."