86 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Disputes will inevitably arise between them; many will be settled 

 by mutual compromise in which, perhaps, the chief consideration 

 will be the amount of warlike force behind the arguments ad- 

 vanced; many others will be sure to find their way to an arbitral 

 tribunal, and before that body arguments will be made and by that 

 body decisions will be handed down embracing principles not now 

 to be found in the books, but which the circumstances of the case 

 and the demands of justice require. And so will doubtless ensue a 

 growth of " international judge-made law and equity " which will 

 gradually work an extension of the arbitral jurisdiction into fields 

 at present unknown to the law of nations. One thing is certain: 

 the law so developed must not, on the one hand, be in conflict with 

 the Grotian doctrine of the equality of states as rightly understood, 

 nor, on the other, with that great all-pervading law of the survival 

 of the fittest — a law which determines the destinies of men and 

 nations alike. 



THE FATE OF THE BEAGLE. 



Br the Rev. V. MARSHALL LAW. 



OK the 27th of December, 1831, his Majesty's ship Beagle, a 

 ten-gun brig, under the command of Captain Fitz Roy, R. N., 

 sailed from Devonport, England, on an expedition the purpose of 

 which was to complete a survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego 

 that had been begun under Captain King (1826-30); to survey 

 the shores of Chile and Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific; 

 and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the 

 world. The voyage was one of the most memorable ones in the 

 annals of scientific exploration, for, besides the direct results, which, 

 in the condition of geography and natural history at the time, con- 

 stituted very important additions to knowledge, it carried Charles 

 Darwin, then young and full of the enthusiasm for study that 

 never left him. Mr. Darwin accompanied the expedition on the 

 invitation of its commander, Captain Fitz Roy, and with the spe- 

 cial sanction of the Lords of the Admiralty, and, as it turned out, 

 next to the captain of the vessel was perhaps the most important 

 member of it. He made it his special business to inquire into the 

 character and method and the reason of all the natural objects and 

 phenomena he saw, examining what was in the sea while they were 

 upon it, and, when they landed, going ashore and studying the 

 geography and geology and life of the region as thoroughly as the 

 time of stay would permit, and collecting no end of notes and speci- 

 mens as material for future study. 



