PRESENT STATUS OF THE QUESTION 15 



in making him the convinced and thoroughgoing 

 evolutionist that he was. 



It is interesting to retrace some of the more signifi- 

 cant steps by which Darwin reached his conclusions, 

 a course which he has made easy by his autobiograph- 

 ical sketch. The famous voyage in the naval brig 

 Beagle, which lasted nearly five years (1831-1836) 

 was, he tells us, "by far the most important event 

 in my life and has determined my whole career." 

 Much of this period was spent in long journeys in 

 the interior of South America, and the wealth of 

 observations thus gathered forced upon him the 

 problem of transmutation. There were three classes 

 of facts by which he was deeply impressed. (1) In 

 the surface deposits of the Argentine pampas he 

 found the remains of gigantic extinct animals, dif- 

 fering from, yet fundamentally resembling those 

 which still inhabit the same region. (2) "The 

 manner in which closely allied animals replace one 

 another in proceeding southward over the conti- 

 nent." Such a succession of closely allied forms 

 is what would be expected on the evolutionary 

 theory; a single species in ranging over a very wide 

 area would become modified so as to give rise to 

 several other species, while from the doctrine of 

 special creation no explanation is possible. (3) 

 What had the greatest weight to his mind was af- 

 forded by his observations in the Galapagos archi- 

 pelago, a group of volcanic islands 500 miles west 

 of the Ecuador coast. As a whole, the animals and 



