EVOLUTION 



CHAPTER I 



EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION FROM EXPLORER 

 AND PALEONTOLOGIST 



The Voyage of the "Beagle" The Galapagos Islands 

 Other Geographical Evidence Resemblances of Present 

 Forms and Past Ones The Ancestry of the Horse 

 Connecting Links Other Palaeontological Evidences. 



THE VOYAGE OF THE "BEAGLE." We think 

 of the voyage of the 'Challenger" as a Co- 

 lumbus-voyage in the history of Biology, 

 for it revealed a new world- -the strange, 

 silent, cold, dark, plantless world of the 

 abyssal sea. But a far greater Columbus- 

 voyage was that of the "Beagle" (1831-6), 

 which led Darwin, as the supreme field- 

 naturalist, at once widest and intensest, to 

 make the whole world new. For it was during 

 this voyage that the evolutionist view of 

 Nature was vitally borne in on Darwin's 

 mind. He tells us so himself: "On my return 

 home in the autumn of 1836 I immediately 

 began to prepare my journal for publication, 

 and then saw how many facts indicated the 



15 



