Darwin in South Africa

Charles Darwin visited South Africa when his ship, HMS Beagle, docked in Cape Town in 1836.

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Darwin Day was celebrated yesterday, as it is every year on his birthday, 12 February. The following is an article I published on my blog, ReasonCheck on 24 November 2009.

Today is the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Charles Darwin's seminal On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (This mouthful was changed for the sixth edition of 1872 to the familiar The Origin of Species.) So this anniversary marks one of the most important events in human history: the day faith in the supernatural was no longer required to explain human origins.

Darwin visited South Africa in 1836. The HMS Beagle was on its homeward journey and although the crew were keen to get home, Captain Fitzroy needed to exercise one of his interests and visit the newly opened South African Observatory. Darwin went ashore to “geologise”. The geology of the region interested him greatly. But ever the naturalist, he discovered a bug in the Cape, and it is named after him - Kaapiad darwini.

In all, he spent 18 days in the Cape. By all accounts he was sick and miserable, the cold and rainy Cape winter not helping matters. He recorded in his diary that it was a rather desolate country. (In a later book describing his travels, he stated that “there was no country like South Africa” with regard to the large animals that could be found in the interior.)

The world-renowned British astronomer Jon Herschel was living at the Cape at this time, studying the Southern sky. Herschel was fascinated by the Cape's unusual indigenous flora and started speculating on how species evolved. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy were invited by Herschel to dinner and although the details of the conversation are unknown, the 26-year-old Darwin was said to be very impressed by Herschel's ideas.

The city of Cape Town has erected a series of commemorative plaques to mark the route Darwin took during his stay. Here are images of one of the plaques, taken in Sea Point, Cape Town.

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Also posted on Weku, @tim-beck, 2019-02-13