The Voyage of the Beagle (Classics of World Literature) (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature)

The Voyage of the Beagle (Classics of World Literature) (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature)

The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin's travels around the world as an independent naturalist on HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836 impressed upon him a sense of the natural world's beauty and sublimity which language could barely capture. Words, he said, were inadequate to convey to those who have not visited the inter-tropical regions, the sensation of delight which the mind experiences'. Yet in a travel journal which takes the reader from the coasts and interiors of South America to South Sea Islands, Darwin's descriptive powers are constantly challenged, but never once overcome. In addition, The Voyage of the Beagle displays Darwin's powerful, speculative mind at work, posing searching questions about the complex relation between the Earth's structure, animal forms, anthropology and the origins of life itself. In 1825, Darwin spent the summer as an apprentice Doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire. In the autumn, he went to the university of Edinburgh to study medicine, but was revolted by the brutality of surgery and neglected his medical studies. In 1827, his father, unhappy at Charles’s lack of progress, enrolled him in a Bachelor of Arts course at Christ’s College, Cambridge to qualify as a clergyman. Charles, however, preferred riding and shooting to studying. Around this time, Darwin was introduced to the Reverend John Stevens Henslow, Professor of Botany, for expert advice on beetles, which Charles had taken to collecting competitively. Darwin quickly became Henslow’s favourite pupil and was recommended by him as a suitable naturalist for the unpaid position of gentleman’s companion to the captain of HMS Beagle. His travels on this ship are recorded by him in The Voyage of the Beagle. Whilst on his five-year voyage on the Beagle, Darwin was puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected. He investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838. His book, On the Origin of Species, established evolution by common descent as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature. He examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.