Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
When HMS Beagle made its first landfall in January 1832, the twenty-two-year-old Charles Darwin set about taking detailed notes on geology. He was soon planning a volume on the geological structure of the places visited, and letters to his sisters confirm that he identified himself as a ‘geologist’. For a young gentleman of his class and income, this was a remarkable thing to do. Darwin's conversion to evolution by selection has been examined so intensively that it is easy to forget that the most extraordinary decision he ever made was to devote his life to the study of the natural world by becoming a geologist. It is only slightly less astonishing that he should have decided to align his work with Charles Lyell's controversial programme of geological reform, which had almost no followers in England.
1 General surveys of Darwin's geological work include: Judd, J. W., ‘Darwin and geology’, in Darwin and Modern Science (ed. Seward, A. C.), Cambridge, 1909, pp. 337–84Google Scholar; the introductory essays by Judd in Darwin, C., On the Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs: Also Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands and Parts of South America Visited during the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle (ed. Judd, J. W.), London, n. d.Google Scholar; Herbert, S., ‘The logic of Darwin's discovery’, Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1968Google Scholar; idem., ‘Darwin as a geologist’, Scientific American, (1986), 254, no. 5, pp. 116–23Google Scholar; Rhodes, F. H. T., pp. 193–229Google Scholar, this volume.
2 Of course, there were many more skilled and experienced geologists in 1832, but few who were so young.
3 Barlow, N. (ed.), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, London, 1958, pp. 52–3Google Scholar. For a general discussion of Darwin's Edinburgh years, see Ashworth, J. H., ‘Charles Darwin as a student in Edinburgh, 1825–1827’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, (1934–1935), 55, pp. 97–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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5 These and other comments on Jameson's lectures can be found in Eyles, V. A., ‘Robert Jameson and the Royal Scottish Museum’, Discovery, (1954), 15, pp. 155–62, esp. p. 159Google Scholar; see also Flinn, D., ‘James Hutton and Robert Jameson’, Scottish Journal of Geology, (1980), 16, pp. 251–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jameson's course in the wider context of the University is clearly set out in Morrell, J. B., ‘Science and Scottish University reform: Edinburgh in 1826’, BJHS, (1972), 6, pp. 39–58, esp. pp. 48–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
6 ‘Darwin in Edinburgh. II’, St. James's Gazette, (17 02 1888), 16, no. 2404, p. 7Google Scholar. The anonymous author of this article notes that Darwin did not register for this class and probably joined it late in the session, perhaps with the encouragement of his friends in the Plinian and other student natural history societies. Any lectures he would have missed involved meteorology and hydrography.
7 Barlow, (ed.), op. cit. (3), p. 45.Google Scholar
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9 Ibid., p. 466.
10 Ibid., pp. 421, 447, 452; for Jameson's encouragement of debate, see Secord, J. A., ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians: Robert Jameson and Robert E. Grant’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1991), 24, pp. 1–18.Google Scholar
11 Ibid., pp. 382, 341–2. For the emphasis of Wernerian geology on classification and order, see Laudan, R., From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science, Chicago, 1987, esp. pp. 138–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Greene, M. T., Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing World, Ithaca, NY, 1982, pp. 19–68.Google Scholar
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13 Evidence, Oral and Documentary, Taken and Received by the Commissioners… for Visiting the Universities of Scotland: The University of Edinburgh, Parliamentary Papers, 35, (1837), p. 145Google Scholar. Jameson's deployment of this approach in the context of Edinburgh lecturing is effectively dealt with in Porter, R., The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815, Cambridge, 1977, pp. 149–56.Google Scholar
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15 Barlow, (ed.), op. cit. (3), p. 53Google Scholar. The fruitful nature of Wernerian research is emphasized in Laudan, , op. cit. (11)Google Scholar, and in Ospovat, A. M., ‘Reflections on A. G. Werner's “Kurze Klassification”’, in Toward a History of Geology (ed. Schneer, C. J.), Cambridge, Mass., 1969, pp. 242–58Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that Jameson apparently played no part in the campaign to save Mutton's geological sections at Salisbury Crags from destruction by quarrying. The fight was led by Sir James Hall and Thomas Charles Hope, as explained in Gray, W. Forbes, ‘The quarrying of Salisbury Crags’, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, (1932), 18, pp. 181–210.Google Scholar
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18 Edinburgh University Library: Ms. Gen. 7460, fols. 250–1.
19 Ibid., fols. 1, 10, 13. It is worth noting that Hope, like Hall, differed from Hutton in his willingness to admit to evidence for major catastrophes in Earth history. In 1810, for example, Hope claimed that the progress of erosion ‘must have been greatly accelerated by the Deluge’. Whether he still held this opinion in 1826 is not known. [Archibald] Alison, ‘Notes on chemistry from Dr Hopes Lectures’, Edinburgh University Library: Ms. Gen. 1399, iv, p. 21.
20 Morrell, , op. cit. (5).Google Scholar
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22 As evidenced by a letter of 1844, when he claimed not to know the editor of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal: Darwin, C. to von Morlot, A., 9 08 [1844]Google Scholar, Burkhardt, and Smith, (eds.), op. cit. (4), iii, p. 51Google Scholar. For Hope, see Darwin, C. to Darwin, Caroline, 6 01 1826Google Scholar, in ibid., i, p. 25. For the family links, see Shepperson, G., ‘The intellectual background of Charles Darwin's student years at Edinburgh’, in Darwinism and the Study of Society: A Centenary Symposium (ed. Banton, M.), London, 1961, pp. 17–35.Google Scholar
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31 Barlow, (ed.), op. cit. (3), pp. 68–9Google Scholar. Several pages of early field notes from the area around Llanmynach (a village sixteen miles northwest of Shrewsbury) may date from this time, or may have been made during the first stage of the tour with Sedgwick; see DAR 5.C4, fols. 1–4.
32 Compare Darwin, C. to Henslow, J. S., [11 07 1831]Google Scholar, with Darwin, C. to Fox, W. D., [9 07 1831]Google Scholar, in Burkhardt, and Smith, (eds.), op. cit. (4), i, pp. 124–5.Google Scholar
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34 Rudwick, M. J. S., ‘Charles Darwin in London: the integration of public and private science’, Isis, (1982), 73, pp. 186–206, at p. 193Google Scholar. The transformation was, however, not in Darwin's ascribed status (as Rudwick suggests), but in his self-image. For the quotation, see Darwin, C. to Whitley, C. T., [12 07 1831]Google Scholar, in Burkhardt, and Smith, (eds.), op. cit. (4), vii, p. 466.Google Scholar
35 Barlow, (ed.), op. cit. (3), pp. 69–70Google Scholar: I told Sedgwick of the fact, and he at once said (no doubt truly) that it must have been thrown away by someone into the pit; but then added, if really embedded there it would overthrow all that we know about the superficial deposits of the midland counties… But I was then utterly astonished at Sedgwick not being delighted at so wonderful a fact as a tropical shell being found near the surface in the middle of England.’
36 The notes (DAR 5, fols. 5–16) are transcribed in Barrett, P. H., ‘The Sedgwick-Darwin geological tour of North Wales’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, (1974), 118, pp. 146–64Google Scholar. Sedgwick's maps and notebooks, including a typed transcription by O. T. Jones, are in the Sedgwick Museum, University of Cambridge.
37 Greenough, G. B., A Geological Map of England and Wales, London, 1820Google Scholar. A copy of a reduced version published by J. Gardner in 1826, in the map collection of Cambridge University Library, is said to have belonged to Darwin.
For the role of Greenough's map, see Rudwick, M. J. S., ‘The foundation of the Geological Society of London: its scheme for co-operative research and its struggle for independence’, BJHS, (1963), 1, pp. 234–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the alternative view expressed in Laudan, R., ‘Ideas and organizations in British geology: a case study in institutional history’, Isis, (1977), 68, pp. 527–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Sedgwick's researches, see Secord, J. A., Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian-Silurian Dispute, Princeton, 1986, esp. pp. 47–50Google Scholar; for the work of his predecessors, see Torrens, H., ‘Arthur Aikin's mineralogical survey of Shropshire, 1796–1816, and the contemporary audience for geological publications’, BJHS, (1983), 16, pp. 111–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hailstone, J. to Sedgwick, A., 6 06 1831Google Scholar, Cambridge University Library, Add. ms 7652.IA.56.
38 Barrett, , op. cit. (36), p. 157Google Scholar; Sedgwick, A., entry for 8 08 1831Google Scholar. For a good contemporary account of the caves at Plas-yn-Cefn, see Stanley, E., ‘Memoir on a cave at Cefn in Denbigshire’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, (1833), 14, pp. 40–53Google Scholar, based on fieldwork in the first three months of 1832. Stanley (p. 41) emphasizes the ease of finding vertebrate fossils at Cefn.
39 Sedgwick, A., entries for 6–8 08 1831Google Scholar, Journal no. XXI; Barrett, , op. cit. 36, p. 156Google Scholar. Also helpful is Sedgwick's contemperary account of the main results of the tour with Darwin: Sedgwick, to Murchison, , 13 09 1831Google Scholar, in Clark, J. W. and Hughes, T. M., The Life and Letters of Adam Sedgwick, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1890, i, pp. 377–9, at p. 378.Google Scholar
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41 Barrett, , op. cit. (36), p. 158Google Scholar. For the prevalence of this interpretation of valley formation, see Davies, , op. cit. (26), p. 241Google Scholar. Darwin recalled Sedgwick's reaction in Darwin, C. to Hughes, T. M., 24 05 1875Google Scholar, in Clark, and Hughes, , op. cit. (39), i, pp. 380–1.Google Scholar
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57 DAR 32.1, vol. 23v. See also Notebook 1.4, entry for 25 January 1832: ‘Reason for not think the sea has fallen.’
58 DAR 32.1, fol. 19, where Darwin also wrote ‘I could have scarcely credited that rocks nearly as hard as the conglomerates of older formation (viz of red-sandstone formation Anglesey) could daily be increasing under my own eyes.’ See also Notebook 1.4, entry for 17 January 1832. The criticism of Daubeny on lava was noted about St Jago; see DAR 32.1, fol. 35v. Lyell's emphasis on vera causae is well brought out in Laudan, , op. cit. (11), pp. 201–20.Google Scholar
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72 Ibid., p. 23.