Darwin on Galapagos (1880)

A model of the species found in the Galapagos (at left) and South America (not to scale). Entry by the Estes Grant family for the Beaty Biodiversity Museum's Bake a Cake for Darwin 2011

A new document just posted at The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online contains a previously unpublished remark on Darwin’s feelings about the Galapagos Islands. It comes from notes Darwin took while reading Alfred Russel Wallace’s Island Life: or, The phenomena and causes of insular faunas and floras, including a revision and attempted solution of the problem of geological climates (London: Macmillan & Co., 1880):

Galapagos. — I regret that you have not discussed plants. Perhaps I overvalue these Islds for how they did interest me & how they have influenced my life, as as one main element of my attending to origin of species.

You see that I have gone on writing as I read, & on almost next page there comes discussion of Galapagos flora!

John van Wyhe writes that “[a]s in his other descriptions of the Galapagos, however, Darwin here too refers to them not as the sole influence, but one of a number of the most important influences that first convinced him that species must evolve.”

Darwin Online now has a Facebook page, and I sure do hope you’ll go like it!