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More than 150 years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin's 'dangerous idea' continues to spark impassioned scientific, philosophical and theological debates. This series includes key texts by precursors of Darwin, his supporters and detractors, and the generations that followed him. They reveal how scholars and philosophers approached the evidence in the fossil record and the zoological and botanical data provided by scientific expeditions to distant lands, and how these intellectuals grappled with topics such as the origins of life, the mechanisms that produce variation among life forms, and heredity, as well as the enormous implications of evolutionary theory for the understanding of human identity.

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63 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Darwin, Evolution and Genetics

Page 3 of 4

Emma Darwin, Wife of Charles Darwin
  • A Century of Family Letters
  • Volume 2
  • Edited by H. E. Litchfield
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    22 April 2010
    First published in:
    1904
  • This remarkable collection of private correspondence between Emma Darwin and members of her family, published in 1904, provides the reader with an enjoyable and informative account of prosperous middle-class life in the Victorian period, as well as a picture of an amusing, educated, and caring woman. Emma Darwin (1808–1896) was especially remembered for her patience and fortitude in dealing with her husband's long term illness, which became apparent shortly after their marriage. In nursing and humouring Charles through his many ups and downs, she was a crucial factor in her husband's scientific accomplishments. She was responsible for bringing up their large family, running their household, and hosting visits from relatives and scientists. This, the second of two volumes edited by her daughter Henrietta, covers the period from 1839 until Emma's death in 1896. The letters are organised chronologically, and the book includes delightful illustrations from the family archives.

The Coming of Evolution
  • The Story of a Great Revolution in Science
  • John W. Judd
  • Published online:
    07 September 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1910
  • John Wesley Judd (1840–1916) had a distinguished career, serving as both President of the Geological Society and Dean of the Royal College of Science. Before his retirement as Professor of Geology from Imperial College, he wrote this concise and accessible review of the beginnings of evolutionary theory. Judd skilfully examined the roots of an idea that, already by 1910, had profoundly influenced every branch of science and permeated the work of historians, politicians and theologians. His lively narrative introduces the key individuals, including Darwin and Lyell, who brought about this intellectual revolution. Judd analyses the principal influences that worked upon these scientists as well as the factors that permitted them to remain open to radical new views. His appreciation of the vision, courage and far-reaching impact of the work of both Lyell and Darwin, and the interplay between their ideas, is persuasively and eloquently expressed.

Darwinism
  • An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection, with some of its Applications
  • Alfred Russel Wallace
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1889
  • Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) is regarded as the co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of evolution. It was an essay which Wallace sent in 1858 to Darwin (whom he greatly admired and to whom he dedicated his most famous book, The Malay Archipelago) which impelled Darwin to publish an article on his own long-pondered theory simultaneously with that of Wallace. As a travelling naturalist and collector in the Far East and South America, Wallace already inclined towards the Lamarckian theory of transmutation of species, and his own researches convinced him of the reality of evolution. On the publication of On the Origin of Species, Wallace became one of its most prominent advocates, and Darwinism, published in 1889, supports the theory and counters many of the arguments put forward by scientists and others who opposed it.

Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries visited by H. M. S. Beagle
  • Charles Darwin
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1840
  • Even before Charles Darwin changed the world with his theory of natural selection, he was recognised as an eminent scientist and natural historian. Published in 1840, his Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle reveals him as a writer of formidable intelligence and a keen observer of natural and human life. Darwin's journal encompasses every observable detail of the animals, birds and plants he encountered on the five-year voyage. It includes minute descriptions and even sketches of the movements and habits of hitherto unfamiliar species. Accompanying the entries are his own conclusions, analyses and classificatory notes that demonstrate his skill and talent as a naturalist. Darwin's entries on natural phenomena are interspersed with anecdotes of the indigenous peoples he encountered, transforming his journal from an impersonal scientific record to a book of true human interest.

Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature
  • Thomas Henry Huxley
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 September 2009
    First published in:
    1863
  • In 1863, the biologist and educator Thomas Henry Huxley published Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, a compilation of his public lectures on Darwin's theory of evolution — specifically the controversial idea of the ape ancestry of humans. An energetic supporter of Darwin, Huxley's argues that in order to understand the universe, everyone must know their place in the natural world. The book is divided into three parts, each written with the aim of persuading lay audiences. The first covers earlier human beliefs about exotic animals, especially 'man-like' apes. In Part 2, Huxley suggests that every animal on Earth is related in that all go through developmental stages from an egg, whether the animal is 'a silkworm or a school-boy'. Part 3 involves a discussion of recently discovered Neanderthal bones and compares prehistoric craniums to modern human skulls.

On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants
  • Charles Darwin
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1865
  • Initially published by the Linnean Society, this 1865 essay was Darwin's first foray into the study of climbing plants. He was inspired to produce this work by a paper on the tendrilled Cucurbitacean plant by American botanist Asa Gray, with whom he had a firm intellectual friendship. Darwin examines in detail those plants which climb using a twisting stem, such as the hop; leaf-climbers, such as the clematis; tendrilled plants such as the passion flower; and hook and root climbers such as ivy. The conclusions reached by his study are presented in terms of the adaptations of various species to their environments, a continuation of the theories that Darwin had propounded in his On the Origin of the Species six years earlier. His passion for the design of the plants and fascination with the diversity of their powers of movement are clear in this accessible example of the process of evolution.

The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin
  • Including an Autobiographical Chapter
  • Volume 1
  • Charles Darwin
  • Edited by Francis Darwin
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1887
  • This book, the first of three-volumes detailing the life of Charles Darwin, published five years after his death, was edited by his son Francis, who was his father's collaborator in experiments in botany and who after his death took on the responsibility of overseeing the publication of his remaining manuscript works and letters. In the preface to the first volume, Francis Darwin explains his editorial principles: 'In choosing letters for publication I have been largely guided by the wish to illustrate my father's personal character. But his life was so essentially one of work, that a history of the man could not be written without following closely the career of the author.' Among the family history, anecdotes and reminiscences of scientific colleagues is a short autobiographical essay which Charles Darwin wrote for his children and grandchildren, rather than for publication. This account of Darwin the man has never been bettered.

The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin
  • Including an Autobiographical Chapter
  • Volume 3
  • Charles Darwin
  • Edited by Francis Darwin
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1887
  • This book, the third of three-volumes detailing the life of Charles Darwin, published five years after his death, was edited by his son Francis, who was his father's collaborator in experiments in botany and who after his death took on the responsibility of overseeing the publication of his remaining manuscript works and letters. In the preface to the first volume, Francis Darwin explains his editorial principles: 'In choosing letters for publication I have been largely guided by the wish to illustrate my father's personal character. But his life was so essentially one of work, that a history of the man could not be written without following closely the career of the author.' Among the family history, anecdotes and reminiscences of scientific colleagues is a short autobiographical essay which Charles Darwin wrote for his children and grandchildren, rather than for publication. This account of Darwin the man has never been bettered.

On the Genesis of Species
  • St George Jackson Mivart
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    24 September 2009
    First published in:
    1871
  • St George Jackson Mivart was an eminent biologist, who was at first an advocate for natural selection and later a passionate opponent. In this beautifully illustrated 1871 text, Mivart raised objections to natural selection as a means for evolution. These included problems in explaining: 'incipient stages' of complex structures (e.g. the mammalian eye); the existence of similar structures of divergent origin; dramatic and rapid changes in form; the absence of transitional forms from the fossil record; and issues in geological distribution. Citing the giraffe's neck, the rattle of the snake and the whale's baleen, Mivart argued for the necessity of an innate power underlying all organic life. Mivart's book did not seriously undermine the concept of natural selection - Darwin and Huxley soon countered his 'formidable array' of arguments - but it helped move the debate forward. Sadly, it also led to a rift between Mivart and Darwin.

Essay on the Theory of the Earth
  • 2nd edition
  • Georges Cuvier
  • Translated by Robert Kerr
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    06 August 2009
    First published in:
    1815
  • Essay on the Theory of the Earth was the last work of the scientific writer Robert Kerr who translated it from the introductory essay of George Cuvier's four-volume Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes. Before its first publication in 1813, the essay was partly expanded by the geologist and natural historian Robert Jameson who wrote a preface and included extensive notes on mineralogy. Using geological evidence as its principal source of enquiry, Cuvier's essay attempts to address the questions of the origins of the human race, the formation of the earth, and the correlation between incomplete fossil remains and existing species of animals. Extremely influential in its own time, the essay remains a source of considerable insight into the early development of geological research, examining issues of continued significance today.

The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man
  • With Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation
  • Charles Lyell
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1863
  • Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875) is remembered today as much for his profound influence on the young Charles Darwin as for his own work as a geologist: Darwin read the three volumes of his Principles of Geology (1830–3) as they came out, and was greatly interested in Lyell's theory of the huge effects over geological time of an accumulation of tiny, almost unobservable changes. The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man was published in 1863, and went into three editions in that year alone. The work synthesises the then existing evidence for the earliest humans in Europe and North America and – as indicated by its subtitle, With Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation – discusses Darwin's theory and 'the bearing of this hypothesis on the different races of mankind and their connection with other parts of the animal kingdom.'

The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom
  • Charles Darwin
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1876
  • Darwin's impetus for the experiments of which the results are recorded in this book was 'a mere accidental observation; and indeed it required the accident to be repeated before my attention was thoroughly aroused to the remarkable fact that seedlings of self-fertilised parentage are inferior, even in the first generation, in height and vigour to seedlings of cross-fertilised parentage'. After eleven years of meticulous experimentation and observation, described in this volume, he was ready to publish in 1876 the detailed study which he regarded as a companion volume to his 1862 On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects. His 'first and most important of the conclusions which may be drawn ... is that cross-fertilisation is generally beneficial, and self-fertilisation injurious': this understanding is of course the basis of all modern plant breeding programmes.

Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection
  • A Series of Essays
  • 2nd edition
  • Alfred Russel Wallace
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1870
  • Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) is regarded as the co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of evolution. It was an essay which Wallace sent in 1858 to Darwin (to whom he had dedicated his most famous book, The Malay Archipelago) which impelled Darwin to publish an article on his own long-pondered theory simultaneously with that of Wallace. As a travelling naturalist and collector in the Far East and South America, Wallace already inclined towards the Lamarckian theory of transmutation of species, and his own researches convinced him of the reality of evolution. On the publication of On the Origin of Species, Wallace became one of its most prominent advocates. This second, corrected, edition (1871) of a series of essays published in book form in 1870, shows the development of his thinking about evolution, and emphasises his admiration for, and support of, Darwin's work.

The Power of Movement in Plants
  • Charles Darwin
  • In collaboration with Francis Darwin
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1880
  • Written in collaboration with his son Francis, a notable botanist, this 1880 book builds on Darwin's earlier investigations into climbing plants, orchids, insectivorous plants, flower variety, and the processes of fertilisation. This detailed study of many species from seed to mature plant further develops Darwin's work on adaptation and evolution, with the aim of collating the results of individual studies into common factors applicable to plants in general. Particular emphasis is given to analysis and investigation of the process here termed circumnutation, the movement of the stem of the plant in order to direct the head in certain directions. This is seen as of paramount importance, with the conclusion that it is modification of this feature that has enabled plants to adapt and evolve so diversely. The authors also note similarities between plants and animals, such as sensitivity to touch and habit of action at certain times.

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
  • Volume 1
  • Charles Darwin
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1871
  • In his introduction, Darwin reveals that for many years he had no intention of publishing his notes on this topic, 'as I thought that I should thus only add to the prejudices against my views'. By 1871, he felt that his fellow scientists would show a greater openness of mind to his arguments, even when taken to their logical conclusion and applied to the descent of man from the apes – the aspect of his theory which had been so widely mocked since the notorious question asked by Bishop Wilberforce at the Oxford debate of 1860: was it through his grandmother or his grandfather that Thomas Huxley, Darwin's champion, considered himself descended from a monkey? However, the book's focus on the area of sexual selection and the evolutionary importance of secondary sexual characteristics across the animal kingdom meant that the book was received without the public outrage that Darwin had feared.

Essays upon some Controverted Questions
  • Thomas Henry Huxley
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1892
  • Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) became known as 'Darwin's bulldog' because of his forceful and energetic support for Darwin's theory, most famously at the legendary British Association meeting in Oxford in 1860. In fact, Huxley had some reservations about aspects of the theory, especially the element of gradual, continuous progress, but in public he was unwavering in his allegiance, saying in a letter to Darwin 'As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite'. In his 1892 Essays upon Some Controverted Questions, Huxley collected some of his previously published writings, of which the titles alone give some flavour of his pugnacious stance in debate: 'The interpreters of Genesis and the interpreters of Nature'; 'Science and pseudo-science'; 'Agnosticism and Christianity'. The passion for scientific truth which underlies everything he writes is well demonstrated in this lively and still-relevant collection.

Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews
  • Thomas Henry Huxley
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1870
  • Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) became known as 'Darwin's bulldog' because of his forceful and energetic support for Darwin's theory, especially at the notorious British Association meeting in Oxford in 1860. In fact, Huxley had some reservations about aspects of the theory, especially the element of gradual, continuous progress, but in public he was unwavering in his allegiance, saying in a letter to Darwin 'As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite'. In his 1870 essay collection Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, of which the title alone was designed to provoke controversy, he offers a variety of his writings, many of which were originally talks given to a range of audiences from learned societies to a working men's college, and including his own review of On the Origin of Species and a typically passionate response to two other reviews less favourable to Darwin.

Footprints of the Creator
  • Or, the Asterolepis of Stromness
  • Hugh Miller
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1849
  • The geological writings of Hugh Miller (1802–56) did much to publicise this relatively new science. After an early career in banking in Scotland, Miller became editor of a newly founded Edinburgh newspaper, The Witness, in which he published a series of his own articles based on his geological research, a collection of which was issued as a book, The Old Red Sandstone, in 1841, and led to the Devonian geological period becoming known as the 'Age of the Fishes'. Footprints of the Creator (1849) described his reconstruction of the extinct fish he had discovered in the Old Red Sandstone and argued, on theological grounds, that their perfection of development disproved the current Lamarckian theory of evolution. The book, illustrated with woodcuts, was written partly as a response to the then anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1884), also reissued in this series.

Life and Habit
  • Samuel Butler
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1878
  • William Bateson claimed at the Darwin Centenary in 1909 that Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was 'the most brilliant and by far the most interesting of Darwin's opponents, whose works are at length emerging from oblivion.' Best remembered today as the author of the novels Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh, he also wrote on a range of subjects from translations of Homer to studies of evolutionary thought. In his Life and Habit (published in 1878) Butler contended that much of inheritance was based on habit making a feature ingrained, to the extent that it could pass between generations. However, he strongly contests Darwin's views on natural selection, and supports those of Lamarck – who he felt was unjustly overlooked in the scientific rush to acclaim Darwin – and of St George Mivart, whose On the Genesis of Species, published in 1871, was another blast against natural selection by a disenchanted Darwinist.

Insectivorous Plants
  • Charles Darwin
  • Published online:
    29 August 2010
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1875
  • Darwin had long been fascinated by insectivorous plants, from the native British sundews and bladderworts to the exotic pinguiculas and nepenthes which he encountered during the Beagle voyage. Growing in environments low in soil nutrients, their highly specialised ways of obtaining enough food, including the capability for fast movement in the case of the Venus flytrap, were evidence of evolutionary adaptation. But he was also interested in what food they needed, and whether they would be selective when offered a varied diet; and how did the flytrap close its trap on its prey? Darwin conducted a range of simple but ingenious experiments on his collection of insectivores and observed and noted the results of each with his customary meticulousness. The results can be seen in this book, which remains of enormous interest to anyone whose imagination has been fired by these strange and beautiful plants.

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