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Welcome to Greg Laden's Blog.
In 1833, Darwin spent a fair amount of time on the East Coast of South America, including in the Pampas, where he had access to abundant fossil material. Here I'd like to examine his writings about some of the megafauna, including Toxodon, Mastodon, and horses,...
Posted by Greg Laden at 1:06 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Everyone knows about Darwin's Finches, of the Galapagos Islands. But of course, Darwin made observations of birds throughout his travels on The Beagle. Here, I present a number of passages from The Voyage that include some of these observations....
Posted by Greg Laden at 2:39 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Charles Darwin wrote a book called Geological Observations on South America. Since Fitzroy needed to carry out intensive and extensive coastal mapping in South America, and Darwin was, at heart, a geologist more than anything else (at least during the Beagle's voyage), this meant that...
Posted by Greg Laden at 2:09 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
We're half way through Darwin Month, and only a tiny ways through the voyage. Need to hurry up! So, let's skip ahead a bit and hit the Gauchos.... (This is a modified version of a post from my old blog)....
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:05 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Eventually, the Beagle headed south to the area of Uruguay and Argentina, still on the Atlantic Coast, where extensive mapping of the coastal waters was required....
Posted by Greg Laden at 2:08 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
When reading the Voyage, it is impossible to miss the observation that much of the time Darwin was engaged in adolescent boy behavior: Pulling the heads off insects, noting how long they would wiggle after cut in half, closely examining the ooze and guts, occupied much of his time. Obviously, careful observation and a strong stomach were not all that was required to think up Natural Selection and his other theories, or the Origin of Species would have been written dozens of times by dozens of grown up kids.
Posted by Greg Laden at 3:02 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
What do you eat when you are travelling the world in search of truth about the natural world? Most of the time Darwin ate pretty well......
Posted by Greg Laden at 9:37 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I became acquainted with an Englishman who was going to visit his estate ... more than a hundred miles [north] of Cape Frio. As I was quite unused to travelling, I gladly accepted his kind offer of allowing me to accompany him. And so was...
Posted by Greg Laden at 6:45 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The first time I read the following passage from The Voyage, I was reminded of my own first experience in a rain forest (in Zaire). Evident in this passage is at least a glimmering of Darwin's appreciation for the complexity of ecosystems. Darwin could be...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:00 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Behold this humble passage by Darwin, which is what immediately follows his discussion of the octopus. This passage is a touchstone to several important aspects of what Darwin was doing and thinking, and is a poignant link to what Darwin did not know:...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:41 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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