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2. Discussing the unusual habits of the 
rhea, Darwin states that females lay 
eggs in several nests and that males 
then incubate them. In wondering 
how such a system began, he writes: 
‘‘It is evident that there must at first 
be some degree of association, be- 
tween at least two females; other- 
wise the eggs would remain scat- 
tered at distances far too great to 
allow of the male collecting them 
into one nest.” Here Darwin uses a 
primary style of evolutionary think- 
ing: faced with an “odd” adaptation, 
one must discover (or at least postu- 
late) intermediary stages bridging 
the gap between ordinary ancestor 
and peculiar descendant. In think- 
ing about how rheas developed their 
unusual system, Darwin neither in- 
vokes God’s wisdom in design nor 
waxes eloquent about adaptive val- 
ue. Already, he asks the evolution- 
ist’s historical question: How did 
such a system arise from more ordi- 
nary avian conditions? He argues for 
physical continuity (or evolution, if 
you will) by suggesting a rudimen- 
tary incipient state of loose associa- 
tion between females. 
3. Darwin claims that the frigate bird 
“never touches the water with its 
wings, or even with its feet.” Yet, its 
feet are webbed, and Darwin writes: 
“It appears that the deeply indented 
web between its toes is of no more use 
to it, than are the shrivelled wings be- 
neath the wingcases of some coleop- 
terous beetles.” In Waterhouse’s 
monograph, Darwin discusses the 
tucutuco, a burrowing rodent with 
apparently well-developed eyes, yet 
often found blind. Darwin writes: 
“Considering the subterranean hab- 
its of the Tucutuco, the blindness, 
though so frequent, cannot be a very 
serious evil; yet it appears strange 
that any animal should possess an or- 
gan constantly subject to injury.” 
In both these examples, Darwin 
faces directly and wonders powerful- 
ly about the primary category of evi- 
dence for the fact of evolution: 
structures now useless (perhaps even 
marginally harmful) that “make 
sense” only as the retained product 
of a previous history (as water bird or 
terrestrial rodent). 
4. In discussing the rats of Ascension 
Island, Darwin notes that animals 
from the mountain summit are 
black and glossy while those on the 
sea beach are browner. He suspects 
that these differences have arisen 
by local modification (a reasonable 
view, even for a creationist who 
would not deny, after all, the com- 
mon sources of dog and cattle 
breeds). But Darwin then makes the 
crucial evolutionist’s step of extrap- 
olating local differentiation to cases 
of change at larger scale. If these lo- 
cal races arise naturally, then As- 
cension rats (designated by Water- 
house as a new species!) may only 
represent a “strongly marked vari- 
ety” of ordinary rat “brought, by 
some ship, from some unknown 
quarter of the world.” Two pages 
earlier, Darwin offers the same ex- 
planation for differences between 
common and Galapagos rats, where 
again Waterhouse had named a new 
species: “And if a very peculiar cli- 
mate, a volcanic soil, and strange 
food, can together produce a race, or 
strongly marked variety, there is ev 
ery probability of such change hav- 
ing taken place in this case.” 
Waterhouse interpreted these situa- 
tions in a conventional, creationist 
manner. Differences between common 
and Galapagos or Ascension rats do 
not imply directed evolutionary change 
that might be extrapolated to events at 
larger scale. The common rat is a per- 
fectly good, stable species; it merely has 
an uncommonly broad capacity for 
variation, as do all forms “which follow 
man in his peregrinations, and which, 
to a certain degree, are dependent upon 
man.” “Like really domestic animals,” 
Waterhouse states, these rats “are sub- 
ject to a greater degree of variation than 
those species which hold themselves 
aloof.” Darwin, on the other hand, is 
clearly wondering about the arbitrary 
boundary of species and the extrapola- 
tion of small into larger effects that 
transgress the limits of species and 
must record evolution. 
The Beagle, by extension, must have 
had a wonderfully salutary effect upon 
those who dedicated themselves to its 
animals. In an age of limited life expec- 
tancy, Darwin himself died at 73. But 
the five monographers of Beagle Zool- 
ogy did even better. John Gould died at 
77; Waterhouse at 78. Owen and Bell 
lived to 88 and Jenyns reached 93. If 
these rewards were insufficient, we may 
rejoice that all these men now live again 
in the surrogate form of the most beau- 
tiful reprint in years. 
Stephen Jay Gould, who writes “ This 
View of Life ” for Natural History, 
teaches biology, geology, and the history 
of science at Harvard University. 
96 
