XXIX 



CHARLES DARWIN 



1809-1882 



Charles Robert Darwin, the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, was 

 born at Shrewsbury, England, February 12, 180^. He studied at 

 both Edinburgh and Cambridge, and graduated from the latter iru 

 iSji. From 18^1 to 18^6 he served as a naturalist on the ''Beagle,'* 

 which made a trip around the world in the interests of science. The 

 voyage served as a post-graduate course for Darwin, who then first 

 adopted his evolutionary ideas and developed as an origitml investi- 

 gator . Reading Malthus, in 18 j8, on the problem of population and 

 the food supply, he integrated Malthus' ideas into his own views of 

 biology. In 1844 ^^^ began his ''Origin of Species/* which he conv- 

 pleted in 18 ^p. In 1858 he received a paper from Alfred Russell 

 Wallace, then in the Malay Archipelago, which proposed the same 

 theory of natural selection. Darwin believed that when organisms 

 increased much faster than the means of subsistence, the ratios var- 

 ied, and in the conditions produced by these natural causes only those 

 organisms survived which were best fitted to their environment. He 

 applied his concept to hunmn evolution in Jiis "Descent of Man/' 

 published in 18/1. He died April ip, 1882, and was buried in 

 Westminster Abbey. 



NATURAL SELECTION * 



How will the struggle for existence, briefly discussed in the last 

 chapter, act in regard to variation? Can the principle of selection, 

 which we have seen is so potent in the hands of man, apply under 

 nature ? I think we shall see that it can act most efficiently. Let the 

 endless number of slight variations and individual differences occur- 

 ring in our domestic productions, and, in a lesser degree, in those 



* From the Origin of Species. Ch. IV. 



226 



