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Darwin Day is held annually to commemorate one of the greatest names in science, Charles Darwin (1809-1882). With his theory of natural selection and his contribution to the science of evolutionary biology, Darwin is today a name largely spoken in the same respectful tones as other great scientific thinkers such as Galileo, Copernicus and Newton, but in his own lifetime his theory of evolution was a source of great controversy and debate. In subsequent years Darwin's evolutionary theory would sometimes be misunderstood and misappropriated (for example with the popularity of "eugenics" in the early part of the 20th century), but is widely recognised today as one of the most important scientific ideas of all time.
Darwin's life in science admirably interweaved geology, biology and zoology, which we hope to reflect in this present celebratory selection of vintage books, which also draws upon his travels during his five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle.
John Maynard Smith may not be so well known today as the other John Maynard, of 'Keynesian economics' fame, but he was an important figure in science, winner of both the Darwin Medal (1986) and the Darwin–Wallace Award (2008, posthumously) and played an essential role in the development of game theory. In the present work, Smith returns to one of his earliest influences, Darwin's theory of evolution. The book was originally published in 1958 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the centenary of the publication of Darwin's ground-breaking work The Origin of Species the following year. The book was well received and is still held to be an excellent introduction to the subject.
"Pleasure of imagination...I a geologist have ill-defined notion of land covered with ocean, former animals, slow force cracking surface &c truly poetical." - from Charles Darwin's Notebook M, 1838
Darwin's role as a geologist is not always as appreciated as his work on natural selection or biology, but it was his geological findings that initially excited interest upon the return from his voyage with H.M.S. Beagle, in no small part fuelling the popularity of geology in Victorian England. Geology in the Service of Man by Fearnsides and Bulman furnishes a necessary but brief account of the general principles of geology, and looks more in depth at our use of geological resources across a range of purposes.
Darwin's third & last major work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), looked at amongst other things the commonality of emotional expression used by humans and some animals. In The Personality of Animals, zoologist Harold Munro Fox focuses solely on the behaviour of animals, a pioneering work in animal psychology (also, according to the author, known as ethology). The book deals chiefly with higher animals, particularly mammals, birds, and bees.
The Beagle made several stop-overs during the first part of its voyage in South America, including Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and most famously the Galápagos archipelago. During this time, Darwin collected and studied the various flora and fauna, which would lead directly to his theory of evolution by natural selection. This charming Ladybird book, from their 'Animals of the World' series, is a wonderful introduction for younger readers to some of the mammals he would have found during this time.
"In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes" - Charles Darwin on memories of Patagonia
Famously author of My Family and Other Animals (1956), Gerald Durrell's account of his forays into Argentina and Patagonia to collect live animals for his zoo in The Whispering Land makes for a great, often hilarious read. His charming description, for example, of seeing a family of Darwin's rhea, the South American equivalent to the African Ostrich: "...four Darwin's rheas, who were ushering along a swarm of twelve young, each dressed in its striped baby plumage, so that they looked like a line of tiny fat wasps running close to their parents' great feet."
Following the course of H.M.S. Beagle, our next Darwin-inspired book is an account of a visit to Tahiti and a coral reef by the illustrator and Golden Cockerel Press staple Robert Gibbings. Darwin was fascinated with coral, publishing The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs in 1842 as his first monograph, in which he unravelled the mystery of how coral atolls are formed.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) was a friend and advocate of Darwin, earning himself the posthumous moniker "Darwin's Bulldog" as a result. A biologist and anthropologist, Huxley had been slow to accept Darwin's theory of natural selection, wary of it being adopted too wholeheartedly and becoming established almost as a new religion. But he supported Darwin vigorously nonetheless. In this work, Huxley gives evidence for the evolution of man and apes from a common ancestor. It was the first book devoted to the topic of human evolution, discussing much of the supporting evidence. Backed by this evidence, the book proposed to a wide readership that evolution applied as fully to man as to all other life.
The Beagle first sighted Australia on 12th January 1836, and Darwin enjoyed a trip into the interior, visiting Sydney and meeting a range of amazing antipodean animals, including the duck-billed platypus and his first marsupial, a "potoroo" (rat-kangaroo). This lovely vintage Ladybird book seems like the perfect way to finish this list, with its excellent overview of the various mammals found in Australia and New Zealand today. The animals are described along with their habitats and lifestyles, as well as their sizes and taxonomical families. The text is accompanied by gorgeous full-colour illustrations by John Leigh-Pemberton.
After his death in April 1882 and following strong public & parliamentary petitioning, Darwin was buried in London's Westminster Abbey, close to Isaac Newton. The funeral was a huge event, attended by thousands of people, including family, friends, scientists, philosophers and dignitaries. Even to this day tickets to the funeral are highly sought-after due to Darwin’s significance and the fame of the occasion. As Alfred Russell Wallace, aka the "father of biogeography", put it, Darwin had "wrought a greater revolution in human thought within a quarter of a century than any man of our time...and has thereby revolutionised the whole study of nature."
With a wide range of books on the natural sciences, for adults and children, we have plenty of choice for the amateur scientist in your life, regardless of where they sit currently on the evolutionary ladder!
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