CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. 497 



CHARLES KOBEKT DARWIN. 



MR. CHARLES R. DARWIN", the most eminent philosophic natu- 

 ralist of the age, is now sixty-four years of age, having been 

 born in Shrewsbury, England, in 1809. He is descended from distin- 

 guished ancestors on both sides. His father was Dr. Robert Waring 

 Darwin, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his paternal grandfather 

 was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, author of the once-famous books, the " Bo- 

 tanic Garden " and the " Zoonomia." Mr. Darwin's grandfather on the 

 maternal side was the celebrated Josiah Wedgwood, whose name is 

 intimately associated with the progress of the art of pottery in Eng- 

 land. Mr. Darwin attended the Shrewsbury School, spent two years 

 in the University of Edinburgh, and took his degree of B. A. at 

 Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1831. 



Mr. Darwin inherited from the author of " Zoonomia " that love of 

 natural history and the allied sciences which has been the labor and 

 the pleasure of his life. In the autumn of 1831, Captain Fitz Roy, 

 R. N., having offered to give up part of his own cabin to any naturalist 

 who would accompany H. M. S. Beagle in her surveying voyage and 

 circumnavigation, Mr. Darwin volunteered his services without salary. 

 His scientific acquirements were already so well known that the offer 

 was at once accepted, Mr. Darwin stipulating only that he should have 

 the absolute disposal of all his collections. The Beagle sailed from 

 England, December 27, 1831, and returned on the 27th October, 1836. 



In 1839, Mr. Darwin published a volume as a part of Captain Fitz 

 Roy's general work, descriptive of this voyage. The interest excited 

 by this, one of the most graphic, and at the same time most philosophic 

 book of travels that was ever published, led to its reproduction in a 

 modified form, in 1845, under the title of "Journal of Researches into 

 the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the 

 Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle round the World." This Journal shows 

 Mr. Darwin to have been a singularly close observer of every phenome- 

 non in natural history, and of every variety of condition, physical and 

 mental, of the people whom they visited during this remarkable voyage, 

 and exhibits the possession of perceptive powers of the highest order. 

 No single phenomenon is described by Mr. Darwin until after it has 

 been most cautiously examined, and the reader of the Journal is soon 

 impressed with the persuasion that the facts narrated are placed beyond 1 

 a doubt, and that his reasonings on those facts are ever guided by a 

 system of most severe inductive philosophy. This is most especially 

 exemplified in Mr. Darwin's reasonings on the origin of the coral-reefs 

 of the Pacific. 



In the beginning of 1839 Mr. Darwin married his cousin, Emma 

 Wedgwood, and shortly after took up his residence at Down, near 

 vol. i:. 32 



