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Darwin Correspondence Project

Evolution

Darwin concluded On the origin of species with the words: 'There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.'  This was his first use of the word 'evolution', in any form, in print.  He did not invent the term but with his mechanism of 'natural selection', supplemented by ideas about sexual selection, 'divergence' and inheritance, he did describe just how evolution - the continual development of new organisms - could take place. 

At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.
Darwin to Joseph Hooker, [11 January 1844]
If, as I believe that my theory is true & if it be accepted even by one competent judge, it will be a considerable step in science.
Darwin to Emma Darwin 5 July 1844
I have lately been especially attending to Geograph. Distrib, & most splendid sport it is,—a grand game of chess with the world for a Board.
Darwin to C. J. F. Bunbury, 21 April [1856]
The facts which kept me longest scientifically orthodox are those of adaptation … This difficulty, I believe I have surmounted.
Darwin to Asa Gray, 5 September [1857]
…if my explanation of these classes of facts be at all right, whole classes of organic beings must be included in one line of descent.
Darwin to Leonard Jenyns, 7 January [1860]
But if (& oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond … that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes…
Darwin to J. D. Hooker 1 February [1871]

MS-DAR-00006-000-00103.jpg

Darwin's draft outline of Species Theory, sent to Asa Gray in 1857
http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00006/103
Darwin's draft outline of Species Theory, sent to Asa Gray in 1857
CUL DAR 6: 51-56
Cambridge University Library

Abstract of Darwin’s theory

There are two extant versions of the abstract of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. One was sent to Asa Gray on 5 September 1857, enclosed with a letter of the same date (see Correspondence vol. 6, letter to Asa Gray, 5 September [1857] and enclosure). It is in the hand of Ebenezer Norman, Darwin’s copyist and includes minor alterations and corrections by Darwin. The letter and enclosure are in Gray’s correspondence in the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University.

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MS-DAR-00048-000-00187.jpg

Part of a letter from W. H. Miller to Darwin exploring the geometrical architecture of honey-combs
http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00048/187
Part of a letter from W. H. Miller to Darwin exploring the geometrical architecture of honey-combs
CUL DAR 48: B1bbr
Cambridge University Library

The writing of "Origin"

From a quiet rural existence at Down in Kent, filled with steady work on his ‘big book’ on the transmutation of species, Darwin was jolted into action in 1858 by the arrival of an unexpected letter (no longer extant) from Alfred Russel Wallace outlining a remarkably similar mechanism for species change. This letter led to the first announcement of Darwin’s and Wallace’s respective theories of organic change at the Linnean Society of London in July 1858 and prompted the composition and publication, in November 1859, of Darwin’s major treatise On the origin of species by means of natural selection.

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