The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (27 page)

Read The Reluctant Mr. Darwin Online

Authors: David Quammen

BOOK: The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
5.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

caused “nervous dyspepsia”
: Ibid., 4: 225, note 1.

“sugar, butter, spices tea bacon”
: Ibid., 4: 224.

“I am turned into a mere walking”
: Ibid., 4: 234.

“that it induces in most people”
: Ibid., 4: 235–36.

he'd gotten to like his own “aquatic life”
: Ibid., 4: 344.

“Her whole mind was pure & transparent”
: Ibid., 5: 541.

worried that she had inherited his “wretched digestion”
: Ibid., 5:9.

A modern scholar named Randal Keynes
: See Keynes (2002), 241–45.

“her face lighted up”
:
Correspondence
5: 13.

she vomited badly, and “from hour to hour”
: Ibid., 5: 14.

Annie's “hard, sharp pinched features”
: Ibid., 5: 16.

“I quite thank you”
: Ibid., 5: 19.

The governess immediately had “one of her attacks”
: Keynes (2002), 216.

“I am in bed not very well with my stomach”
:
Correspondence
5: 24.

“She went to her final sleep most tranquilly”
: Ibid., 5: 24.

“We shall be much less miserable together”
: Ibid., 5: 25.

“Sometime,” he added, he would like to know
: Ibid., 5: 28.

“I never gave up Christianity until I was”
: Desmond and Moore (1991), 658.

Christianity was “not supported by evidence”
: Browne (2002), 484.

“disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate”
:
Autobiography
, 87.

“Everything in nature,” he concluded coldly
: Ibid.

Later,
“with many fluctuations”
: Ibid., 93.

he simply called himself “muddled”
:
Correspondence
8: 275.

attacked by Leibniz as “subversive” of natural religion
: Ibid., 8: 106, Darwin quoting Brewster's life of Newton.

Gravity was “an occult quality”
: Ibid.

“I cannot believe that there is a bit more”
: Ibid., 8: 258.

“I cannot see, as plainly as others do”
: Ibid., 8: 224.

“An innocent & good man stands”
: Ibid., 8: 275.

“Blessings on her”
: Ibid., 5: 542.

A Duck for Mr. Darwin

“the theory of the progressive development”
: Wallace (1905) 1: 254.

Wallace found his book “very philosophical”
: Ibid.

“shining out like a mass of brilliant flame”
: Wallace (1889), 152.

“good resolutions soon fade”
: Wallace (1905), 1: 309.

What he termed “closely allied species”
: Wallace (1852), reprinted in Camerini, ed. (2002), 101.

“only the announcement of the theory”
: Marchant (1975), 54.

He also wrote about the “creation” of new species
: Wallace (1969), 8–10.

He used the term “antitype”
: Ibid., 6.

“are all explained and illustrated by it”
: Ibid., 18.

“Such phenomena as are exhibited by the Galapagos Islands”
: Ibid., 8.

“Every species has come into existence coincident”
: Ibid., 6.

“began sorting notes for Species Theory”
:
Correspondence
5: 537.

what he called “accidental means” of plant species dispersal
:
The Origin of Species
, facsimile 1st edn. (1964; cited hereafter as
The Origin
), 358.

putrid and stinky “in a quite extraordinary degree”
:
Correspondence
5: 332.

“a wonderful quantity of mucus”
: Ibid., 5: 305.

“I have puppies of Bull-dogs & Greyhound in salt”
: Ibid., 5: 326.

“I am getting on splendidly”
: Ibid., 6: 45.

“Skins,” it began: “Any domestic breed or race”
: Ibid., 5: 510.

Halfway down the list appeared an inconspicuous
: Ibid.

“What think you of Wallace's paper”
: Ibid., 5: 519.

but offered “nothing very new”
: Ibid., 5: 522.

“It seems all creation with him”
: Ibid.

“The domestic duck var. is for Mr. Darwin”
: Ibid., 6: 290.

“By your letter, & even still more”
: Ibid., 6: 387.

“I wish you would publish some small fragment”
: Ibid., 6: 89.

“I rather hate the idea of writing”
: Ibid., 6: 100.

“I had a good talk with Lyell”
: Ibid., 6: 106.

though not necessarily against a “preliminary essay”
: Ibid., 6: 109.

“I am working very steadily at my big Book”
: Ibid., 6: 265.

“This summer will make the 20
th
year (!)”
: Ibid., 6: 387.

His Abominable Volume

“On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely”
: Wallace (1858), reprinted as part of the full Darwin-Wallace presentation to the Linnean Society, in Weigel, ed. (1975). The Wallace paper alone is also reprinted in Wallace (1969).

posited “a general principle in nature”
: Weigel, ed. (1975), 28.

“The life of wild animals”
: Ibid.

“the weakest & least perfectly organized”
: Ibid., 32.

“variations from the typical form of a species”
: Ibid., 34.

Those creatures “best adapted” as a result
: Ibid., 32.

The result would be “continued divergence”
: Ibid., 36.

“successive variations departing further and further”
: Ibid., 28.

“all the phenomena presented by organized beings”
: Ibid., 42.

“Ternate, February 1858”
: Ibid.

“And the answer,” as he recollected long afterward
: Wallace (1905), 1: 362.

“The more I thought over it”
: Ibid.

“Your words have come true with a vengeance”
:
Correspondence
7: 107.

“without its full share of intelligence”
: Litchfield (1915), 2: 162.

describes baby Charles as “severely retarded”
: Desmond and Moore (1991), 467.

“may have been slightly retarded”
: Browne (2002), 37, 503.

“It was the most blessed relief”
:
Correspondence
7: 121.

“after their first sorrow, they could only feel”
: Litchfield (1915), 2: 162.

“nice little bubbling noises”
:
Correspondence
7: 521.

“I shd. be
extremely
glad
now
to publish”
: Ibid., 7: 117.

“This is a trumpery letter”
: Ibid., 7: 118.

“I daresay all is too late”
: Ibid., 7: 122.

though Darwin did allude to “the origin of species”
: Abstract of Darwin's letter to Asa Gray, printed in Darwin and Wallace(1858), reprinted in Weigel, ed. (1975), 22.

that Darwin and Wallace's paper “would not be worthy of notice”
:
Correspondence
7: 292.

savored it as “a taste of the future”
: Ibid., 7: 291.

“I shall never forget the impression”
: Quoted in Browne (2002), 49.

references to the “ingenious and original reasonings”
: Quoted in ibid., 50.

“any of those striking discoveries which at once”
: Quoted in ibid., 42.

“I am quite prostrated & can do nothing”
:
Correspondence
7: 121.

he seized the idea of writing a sleek “abstract”
: Ibid., 7: 130.

“When we look to the individuals”
:
The Origin
, 7.

suffering “the old severe vomiting”
:
Correspondence
7: 247.

“My abstract is the cause”
: Ibid., 7: 247.

“a comparatively free man”
: Ibid.

“I had absolutely nothing whatever to do”
: Ibid., 7: 240.

“written in 1839 now just 20 years ago!”
: Ibid., 7: 241.

“perfect, quite clear & most courteous”
: Ibid., 7: 129.

if Mr. Darwin's “excess of generosity” had resulted
: Ibid., 7: 166.

“strictly just to both parties”
: Ibid.

“who thought so highly of it that they immediately”
: Marchant (1975), 57.

“This assures me the acquaintance and assistance”
: Ibid.

“This insures me the acquaintance of these eminent men”
: Wallace (1905), 1: 365.

“incredibly bad, & most difficult”
:
Correspondence
7: 303.

His proposed title was deadly dull
: Ibid., 7: plate facing p. 283.

“So much for my abominable volume”
: Ibid., 7: 336.

“no possible means of drawing
[
a
]
line”
: Ibid., 7: 349.

their skills at “the American game”
: Ibid.

“You cannot think how refreshing it is”
: Ibid., 7: 350.

“My dear Sir, I have received”
: Ibid., 7: 365.

“Your father says he shall never think”
: Ibid., 7: 395, note 1.

“If a monkey has become a man”
: Peckham (1959), 16.

“the Survival of the Fittest”
: Ibid., 22, 164.

a whole new chapter, “Miscellaneous Objections”
: Ibid., 23, 226.

struck the word “On” from his title
: Ibid., 23, 71.

“When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle'”
:
The Origin
, 1.

“innumerable species inhabiting this world”
: Ibid., 3.

“perfection of structure and coadaptation”
: Ibid.

that the mechanism he calls “natural selection”
: Ibid., 5. Darwin puts the phrase in initial capitals, “Natural Selection,” at this first mention, but later (e.g., p. 81) he leaves it lowercase.

“have been, and are being, evolved”
: Ibid., 490.

talks in these opening pages about “modification and coadaptation”
: Ibid., 4.

“descent with modification”
: Ibid., 331.

or his “theory of descent”
: Ibid., 426.

in his introduction is the “struggle for existence”
: Ibid., 4. Again, capitalized as “Struggle for Existence” on first use, but not always later, e.g., p. 5.

“As many more individuals”
: Ibid., 5.

“No one supposes that all the individuals”
: Ibid., 45.

“much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary”
: Ibid., 48.

“Darwin revolutionized our study of nature”
: Lewontin (2000), 67.

“all nature is at war”
: The allusion to de Candolle is at
The Origin
, p. 62; the quote is from Darwin's 1844 essay, in F. Darwin, ed. (1909), 87.

“The face of Nature may be compared to”
:
The Origin
, 67.

“what may not nature effect”
: Ibid., 83.

“In such case, every slight modification”
: Ibid., 82.

“The more diversified the descendants”
: Ibid., 112.

“every species has come into existence coincident”
: Ibid., 355, quoted from Wallace (1855).

Other books

UNDER BY DURESS by Kayla Stonor
A Singular Woman by Janny Scott
Through the Hole by Kendall Newman
The Ivy: Scandal by Kunze, Lauren, Onur, Rina