CHAPTER I 



EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION FROM EXPLORER 

 AND PALAEONTOLOGIST 



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 Colum- 

 bus-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 evolutionTsT 

 view of Nature was vitally borne in on Dar- 

 win's mind. He tells us so himself : " On my 

 return home in the autumn of 1836 I immedi- 

 ately began to prepare my journal for publi- 

 cation, and then saw how many facts indicated 



the common descent of species. ... In July 

 16 



