28 April 2007
I have just returned from the WildSouth International Film Festival in Wanaka – a festival that I had a hand in organizing. But that is not the point of this: what got me excited was not just the quality of individual films like the wonderful Mississippi: tales of a river rat but the unavoidable awe one experienced at seeing the different faces of Nature apparent in the films. From the opening of the festival, with its montage of superlative images of wildlife set to the haunting music of Trevor Coleman (in Equator: circle of life), to the many insects that dot the South American landscape in Buggin’ with Ruud, to the sequences of sharks, hunting dogs and elephants in the BBC’s Pole to Pole – you could not help but marvel at how varied Nature is, at how clever Natural Selection has been.
Read More...Tags:WildSouth, Voyage of the Beagle, Nature, biodiversity
02 February 2007
Dr Prescott with anchor that may have been used on the Beagle in its later life.
I was interested to read a three-year-old news item that suggested that the remains of Darwin’s ship, HMS Beagle, had been found:
“A team led by Dr Robert Prescott of the University of St Andrews has located what they believe are the remains of HMS Beagle beneath an Essex marsh.” Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, HMS Beagle, Mars, Essex, Prescott, Pillinger, Cape Canaveral
21 January 2007
Painting by Augustus Earle of Kororareka from his time spent in New Zealand
A little while ago I gave a talk at a conference in Auckland in which I mentioned Looking for Darwin. I was approached afterwards by Guy Hamling, who kindly drew my attention to a passage written in Earle’s Narrative of his time in New Zealand. Read More...Tags:Augustus Earle, Kororareka, Charles Darwin, Rio de Janeiro, HMS Beagle, Painter, Evolution
24 December 2006
There is a certain irony in celebrating Christmas if one is an unabashed Darwinist. I wonder if Richard Dawkins gives Christmas gifts? Or receives them, even?
Charles Darwin acknowledged Christmas. While in New Zealand he attended a church service on Christmas Day 1835 in Pahia, where the service, somewhat ahead of its time, was in both English and Maori. Read More...Tags:Merry Christmas, Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, HMS Beagle, Reverend Williams, Pahia, New Zealand, Cannibalism, Richard Dawkins
04 December 2006
The Beagle Project is is an ambitious undertaking to mark the 2009 bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth by building a replica of HMS Beagle and sailing it around the world stopping at the same locations as Darwin. Aboard will be an international complement of young scientists. They will compare their observations with those made by Darwin from 1831 to 1836.
Read More...Tags:The Beagle Project, HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin, David Lort-Phillips, Peter McGrath, Pembrokeshire, Replica
05 November 2006
About the time that Charles Darwin was cruising the world on the Beagle, discovering things that conflicted with the notion of a Creator, Christian missionaries were plying their way around Cape Horn too, spreading the word of God to the uninitiated in the Pacific isles. Among those was Jean Baptiste François Pompallier, a French-born Catholic just a bit over six years older than Darwin. In 1835, at the same time Darwin was making his way across the Pacific, Pope Gregory XVI created the Vicariates of Eastern and Western Oceania. Pompallier was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania and Bishop of Maronea and, on 24 December 1836, less than three months after Darwin’s arrival back in England, he sailed from Le Havre aboard the Delphine for Western Oceania and New Zealand. Read More...Tags:Tonga, Charles Darwin, Bishop Pompalier, Christianity, Pangaimotu
29 June 2006
Mara are large rodents found in Argentina. Their scientific name is Dolichotis patagonum. Darwin doesn’t mention coming across Mara per se in The Voyage of the Beagle; instead he talks about encountering agoutis on the plains of Patagonia. However, there seems little doubt that what he was referring to was Mara. Read More...Tags:Mara, Dolichotis patagonum, Hare, Patagonia, Charles Darwin, Convergent evolution, Monogamy
12 March 2006
In August 1833, when Charles Darwin was on an overland journey in Argentina from El Carmen on the Rio Negro to Bahia Blanca, he came to the encampment of General Juan Manuel de Rosas. Rosas was the wealthy leader of an army of thousands of men sent to the pampas to fight the Indians, who had reacted to the influx of foreigners by slaughtering them. Rosas dressed liked a gaucho, rode like a gaucho but was said to be much more ruthless – especially when he laughed. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, General Rosas, Gaucho, Indians, Rio Negro, El Carmen, Bahia Blance, Argentina
28 February 2006
It is interesting to learn of Darwin’s attitude to slavery. In many ways his grandparents on both the Wedgwood and Darwin sides were instrumental in bringing about its abolition in Britain and the dominions. Slavery was only banned in Britain about the time Charles was born and it took until about the time he left on the Beagle to get full emancipation of slaves in the colonies. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Slavery, Brazil, Fitzroy
06 October 2005
I’ve just finished writing about Darwin’s experiences in the Galapagos Islands and, surprizingly, it took less time and less space than I had originally anticipated. On reflection I can see that this should not have been a surprize because Charles Darwin spent a relatively trifling amount of time in the Galapagos considering the duration of his journey on the Beagle and, when there, it certainly did not strike him as the key to evolution as it has often been portrayed. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Galapagos Islands, Evolution, Natural Selection, Finches, Galapagos Tortoise, Flamingoes, Galapagos penguin
13 September 2005
Darwin’s final staging post before pushing off the South American continent for the Galapagos Islands was Peru. Recently I have been researching and writing about that part of the Voyage of the Beagle. But I have also been using it as an opportunity to digress and explore the relationship between religion and the indigenous South Americans, from rampant Catholicism to the beliefs that preceded the Spanish invasion. Read More...Tags:Monastery, Lima, Catacombs, Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, Monasterio de San Francisco
17 August 2005
This Thing of Darkness, a novel by Harry Thompson about FitzRoy and Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, has made the longlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2005. The book has only just been released and I have not been able to get my hands on a copy in New Zealand yet; but by all accounts it is a ripping yarn that focuses on the conflicting views and, eventually, lives, of FitzRoy and Darwin. Read More...Tags:This Thing of Darkness, Harry Thompson, Booker Prize, Looking for Darwin, Fitzroy, Charles Darwin
12 August 2005
The Touring Club, Trelew: more Jurassic Park than Waldorf-Astoria
I have recently completed writing about Darwin’s travels in Argentina. In doing the research for it, I travelled twice to the Patagonian city of Trelew. I say city, but in every way other than the number of people that live there, it is really just a town. And a town without much to recommend it, save for being the gateway to the animal-encrusted Peninsula Valdés and the home of the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Darwin hotel, The Touring Club, Carnotaurus, Trelew, Museo Paleontologico Egido Feruglio, Punta Alta, Argentina
