Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle solidified much of his view of geology and biology….The Voyage is not a complete story, it is a journal of observations on the biology, people, and, especially, the geology of the Beagle’s five-year cruise to map the coastlines of the southern part of the world. Although scheduled for only two years, it stretched to 57 months, 42 of which were spent in South America. The book can be opened read at most any place, because it is not a continuous story, but a condensation of his observations at various places he saw (over 40 islands and two continents in some detail).
I was interested to see how Darwin’s thoughts and writing developed over the voyage, but, other than his theory on the formation of reefs, nothing came from the voyage immediately. Like most natural history studies, the real work came when he returned to England and his specimens and notes were studied by others and himself.
read more by Jere Lipps, at Berkely Blog.
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