DARWIN MEMORIAL CELEBRATION 
23 
of that society had appeared on the continent, proclaiming that actual 
knowledge of conditions must precede attempts to explain them. 
The development of opinion was so rapid that before Darwin reached 
his majority the geological pendulum had made its great swing from the 
doctrine of cataclysms to that of uniformity; from the belief that this globe 
is less than 6,000 years old to an abiding faith that its age cannot be measured 
in years. It was amid such conditions that, toward the close of his univer¬ 
sity studies, he came under the influence of Henslow and Sedgwick, the 
latter being engaged at that time along with Murchison in an effort to unravel 
the tangle of Welsh geology. Some have said that these men taught him 
how to observe; not so, he was already a keen observer, and they merely 
led him into wider fields. 
In 1831, Captain Fitzroy was assigned to command H. M. S. Beagle, 
a little brig of 240 tons, and was commissioned to complete the coast survey 
of southern South America as well as to run a line around the globe. When 
he expressed the wish to be accompanied by a naturalist, Darwin, then only 
twenty-two years old, promptly volunteered his services, which were ac¬ 
cepted, and he was enrolled as a supernumerary member of the staff. The 
Beagle left England on December 27, 1831, and returned on October 2, 
1836, bringing with it Charles Darwin, now grown intellectually to man’s 
stature and bearing a notable cargo of material collections, as well as of 
accumulated observations. There was no haste in publication; aside from 
some very brief communications to societies, nothing appeared until 1839, 
when the Journal of Researches was printed. Owen’s descriptions of the 
fossil mammalia were issued in 1840, with an introduction by Darwin, and 
the final publication of results was made in three parts, dated 1842, 1844, 
and 1846. Thus early in his career, Darwin showed that caution which 
characterized him throughout life, an indifference to priority which was the 
outgrowth of his love of accuracy. 
Part 2 of the “Geological Observations,” dated 1844, relates chiefly 
to volcanic islands. In most cases the stay at those was brief and the 
studies were fragmentary; yet Darwin saw enough to let him discuss the 
origin of volcanic cones, to determine some cardinal points respecting the 
distribution of the islands, to distinguish submarine from subaerial lava 
flows and to prove that experimental studies on metamorphosis of limestones 
had led to very nearly true conceptions of the process. 
As the coast survey of southern South America was the important object 
of Captain Fitzroy’s expedition, there was ample time for a good reconnais¬ 
sance of that region and Darwin spent nearly six months in studying the 
pampas from the Parana and Uraguay rivers southward almost to Magellan’s 
Strait. A synopsis was given as an introduction to Owen’s memoir, but the 
