Notebooks

Cape de Verds
Introduction, Text

Rio
Introduction, Text

Buenos Ayres
Introduction, Text

Falkland
Introduction, Text

B. Blanca
Introduction, Text

St. Fe
Introduction Text

Banda Oriental
Introduction Text

Port Desire
Introduction Text

Valparaiso
Introduction Text

Santiago
Introduction Text

Galapagos
Introduction, Text, Image

Coquimbo
Introduction Text

Copiapo
Introduction Text

Despoblado
Introduction Text

Sydney
Text

There are preserved today by English Heritage at Down House a series of small notebooks. They were microfilmed in 1969. From their content it is obvious that fourteen of them were the notebooks Darwin had with him on his shore excursions during the Beagle voyage (1831-1836).

The exceptions are the R. N. Notebook, which is partly post-voyage in date of use, and the St Helena Model Notebook, which is entirely post-voyage, and a very fragmentary notebook [1.1] which to judge from a London address on the inside back cover and apparent 1870s dates on some of the many excised page stubs is also post-voyage in date. None of these three notebooks appears to have been used on shore excursions during the voyage and for this reason we do not class them with the field notebooks. A fifteenth field notebook labelled ‘Galapagos. Otaheite Lima’ [Galapagos Notebook], although microfilmed with the others, unfortunately had disappeared from Down House by the early 1980s.

There are excellent photographs of of the covers of some of the notebooks in Tort 2000, 2001. Various authors have speculated that there may originally have been other field notebooks but we agree with Armstrong 1985 in doubting this.

The history of the notebooks, and how they came to be preserved at Down House in 1942, is told in Barrett et al. 1987, p. 2. They were first described by Nora Barlow in the preface to her edition of the Diary (Barlow 1933) [this has been newly transcribed by Rookmaaker]; she then published fairly detailed descriptions of the notebooks, together with extensive extracts from the non-geological parts in her Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle (Barlow 1945). Richard Keynes has also referred to the notebooks in several of his writings on the Beagle voyage (e.g. Keynes 1988) and Nicholas and Nicholas 1989 quoted from the Sydney Notebook, and reproduced a photograph of it. (Nicholas and Nicholas also quoted from Chancellor’s transcription of DAR 40, which is in our opinion effectively Darwin’s ‘field notebook equivalent’ for his visit to Hobart; DAR 40 has been transcribed in full by Banks and Leaman 1999.) Other parts of the voyage for which field notes are in loose sheets are Chiloé (January 1835), King George's Sound (March 1836) and Ascension (1836).

Barlow's edition remains the only book length study of the field notebooks, but she herself admitted that she ignored 'as much as nine tenths' of the content. In other words, Barlow understandably neglected the bulk of her grandfather's first serious (and often tough-going) geological observations and speculations, since she was writing for the general reader. Historians now appreciate that Darwin saw himself during, and for a long period after, the voyage as a geologist (see Herbert 2005). So full publication of the field notebooks is now long overdue.

The Beagle field notebooks are usually referred to by their former Down House numbers. Sometimes parts of the text on their labels are used. However as the numbers are arbitrary and convey no useful meaning we refer to the notebooks with short names which are taken verbatim from the notebook labels by Darwin. We refer to them as, for example, the Falkland Notebook, following the form of reference to notebooks used in the Correspondence. The table below collates our short names with Nora Barlow's numbers, the old Down House numbers and their current English Heritage numbers.

The notebooks are presented here in the chronological order of their first entries. This is approximately the order in which they were originally presented by Barlow and corresponds to the small circled numbers written on some of the inside covers, we believe by Barlow (Chancellor 1990, p. 206).

Our order differs slightly from that adopted by Barlow in the position of the Galapagos Notebook which she placed between the Despoblado and Sydney Notebooks. Our order agrees with the list adopted by the editors of Correspondence vol. 1, who consulted Chancellor when preparing their list. Note that the list of notebook names given in the Correspondence are not always accurate (e.g. there is no 'Santiago' on the cover of the Galapagos Notebook and no 'Bathurst' on the cover of the Sydney Notebook).

A survey of Darwin scholars carried out by van Wyhe in 2004 in preparation for Darwin Online showed that the field notebooks were the most eagerly anticipated unpublished Darwin manuscripts. We therefore present here the first complete transcription of all the Down House notebooks except the R. N. Notebook which was published by Herbert 1980, 1987 and the St Helena Model Notebook which was published by Chancellor 1990. We include the Santiago Notebook which has been referred to frequently by scholars (e.g. Herbert 2005) and part of which was published in the first volume of the Correspondence. We present evidence in the introduction to the Santiago Notebook that Darwin continued to use this notebook into the post-voyage period.

Ours is a team edition; the initial transcription was prepared by Chancellor in the 1980s from microfilm, then checked, corrected against the microfilm and typed by Rookmaaker in 2006, re-checked by Chancellor then re-checked jointly by Chancellor, Rookmaaker and van Wyhe; then we checked and corrected each notebook against the original manuscript or colour photographs. Finally van Wyhe checked the transcriptions and edited each one to ensure consistency. The Santiago Notebook was transcribed originally from the manuscript. We have adhered to the manuscript transcription policy of Darwin Online, but would like to stress a few points which are particularly germane to the field notebooks which reflect their rather unique status within the general corpus of Darwin manuscripts.

Firstly, they are almost entirely written in pencil, so we have noted where ink has been used (e.g. parts of the B. Blanca and Santiago Notebooks). Secondly, we have adhered to Darwin's capitalisation even where this is grammatically incorrect, relying for a 'rule of thumb' that the letter is capitalised if it is at least twice the height of the next letter. We must emphasise, however, that the nature of these field notebooks is such that alternative readings are often possible. Thirdly, we have silently added a paragraph break wherever Darwin has made a line across the page, and since it is often impossible to say when these lines were drawn we have added a paragraph break even where Darwin's line might have been added later as part of the scoring through process (which probably occurred back on ship after transfer of material to other manuscripts). Finally, we have ignored all scoring through of passages on the grounds that they are far too complex to make easy sense of and the image of the manuscript which will eventually appear alongside the transcription should provide all the information on scoring that any scholar might need.

We have used an ‘a, b’ page numbering system, since Darwin did not number the pages himself, and filled the notebooks from both ends. We use ‘a’ for pages reading inwards from the inside front cover, and ‘b’ for pages reading inwards from the inside back cover, except when a notebook was written in a single sequence. Most of the notebooks have hinged brass clasps and we use the convention of referring to the cover with the hinge attached as the back cover (see Chancellor 1990).

The role played by the field notebooks in the recording of Darwin's experiences during the voyage has been described by a number of authors from Barlow onwards (e.g. Armstrong 1985). They can generally be thought of as the hand-held medium used by Darwin to record in pencil his 'on the spot' observations, often while he was on long inland expeditions hundreds of kilometres from the Beagle, perhaps with no other paper to hand, although a notable exception to this generalisation is the latter part of the Santiago Notebook, which is effectively the first of Darwin's theoretical notebooks.

Darwin wrote later in Journal of researches about making notes in the field: 'Let the collector's motto be, "Trust nothing to the memory;" for the memory becomes a fickle guardian when one interesting object is succeeded by another still more interesting.' (p. 598.)

Back on board ship, or in port, he used the notebooks while writing up in ink his geological, zoological and personal diaries. He refers to them in his Journal of researches, p. 24 'I see by my note-book, "wonderful and beautiful, flowering parasites," invariably struck me as the most novel object in these grand scenes.' (This from Rio Notebook, 9 April 1832, p. 9b).

It may be wondered why Darwin did not use one notebook until it was full, rather than keep switching between notebooks. We believe that the main reason he kept switching was that for document security he would only take one notebook onshore, so once he was back on board after an excursion he would start to use the notebook just used as the basis for his various diaries and specimen lists, as explained by Armstrong 1985. Since this process might take weeks, and therefore was often not completed before his next excursion, he preferred to take a notebook with him ashore which had already finished with, rather than risk losing field notes which had not yet been copied out. In this way he had a 'conveyor belt' of field notebooks in various states of use. We can only guess why he sometimes ended up with very incompletely used notebooks (e.g. the Banda Oriental Notebook) but perhaps this was because he preferred using some notebook types rather than others.

When first visiting Down House together to begin checking our transcriptions against the manuscripts, the curator, Tori Reeve, kindly brought out the notebooks. It occurred to van Wyhe to arrange the notebooks according to their first entry order. When thus arranged it became apparent that there are six notebook types which were used almost chronologically, perhaps reflecting successive purchases by Darwin.

Type 1

Cape de Verds, Rio, Buenos Ayres, B. Blanca

All four notebooks have red leather covers with blind embossed edges and are of a long rectangular shape (c. 13 x 8 cm) with integral pencil holders and brass clasps. The notebooks originally contained 112 pages. The paper bears the watermark 'J. Whatman 1830'. All of the original pencils, if they were included with the notebooks when purchased, are missing.

Type 2

Falkland and R. N. (the well-known Red Notebook published by Herbert in 1980 and 1987)

These two notebooks are long and rectangular (16.4 x 10 cm) and have brown leather covers with floral embossed borders and brass clasps. Herbert 1980, p. 5 referred to the R. N. Notebook 'as the name suggests, red in colour, although the original brilliance has faded'. Both notebooks are now brown though there are slight traces of red on Falkland which could be part of now lost colouring. The notebooks contained 184 pages some bearing the watermark 'T. Warren 1830'. Darwin created a pencil holder inside the front cover of Falkland by pasting in a leather sleeve. Presumably this allowed him to carry one of the pencils that fit in the similar holders in the Type1 Notebooks.

Type 3

St. Fe and Banda Oriental

These two notebooks (15.5 x 10 cm) are bound in brown leather with brass clasps. Unlike preceding types they open like a book to the side rather than lengthwise like a pocket book. Only Santiago opens in the same manner. The notebooks were 244 pages long. The end pages and paper edges are marbled. Some pages have a watermark 'W. Brookman 1828'. A piece of cream-coloured paper pasted on the inside back cover of Banda Oriental secures a brown leather pencil holder added by Darwin.

Type 4

Port Desire

This notebook is bound in brown leather with floral embossed borders and brass clasp. Its original back cover was missing (probably the one referred to by Barlow 1945, p. 154) but has since been restored. There were originally 146 pages, some of which bear incomplete watermarks which seem to read John Morbey 1830.

Type 5

Valparaiso, Galapagos, Coquimbo, Copiapo, Despoblado, Sydney

These six notebooks are bound in red or black leather (the first and last are black) with the borders blind embossed and with brass clasps. Integral pencil holders, extensions of the cover leather as in Type 1, are placed on the left side of the front cover. The paper is yellow edged except for Sydney (Galapagos is unknown). The notebooks are of an almost square shape varying from 9 x 7.5 to 12 x 10 cm and were between 100 and 140 pages long. This makes Type 5 the most variable of the notebooks and their spines have an undulating almost lumpy appearance. The inside front covers bear printed labels surmounted by an engraved lion and unicorn:

VELVET PAPER
MEMORANDUM BOOK.

So prepared as effectually to secure the writing from erasure; — with a METALLIC PENCIL, the point of which is not liable to break.
The point of the pencil should be kept smoothly scraped flat & in writing it should be held in the manner of a common Pen.

The pages of the notebook were treated or coated to react with the metallic pencils, now lost. The paper remains bright white and has a silky or velvety feel. We are grateful to Louise Foster (personal communication) for very useful insights into the way the metallic pencils worked and for supplying us with various types of paper and metallic pencils to see how these affected the effectiveness of the pencil. Although the writing in these books looks at first like graphite pencil it is in fact a reaction between the metal of the pencil point and the chemicals with which the paper was treated. This was meant to render the writing indelible.

Type 6

Santiago

This 10 x 16.5 cm notebook is bound in black paper and was originally 138 pages long. Four dovetailing pencil holder loops along the opposite covers which, when the book was closed and a pencil was inserted, held the notebook closed. This is not seen on any other Beagle notebook. The inside covers are green. Inside the front cover there is a pocket that collapses along creased sides. Within there is a printed label:

DUFOUR CHABROL
M^d Papetier
Rue S^t. Martin, N^o132,
A PARIS

The manufacturer's label shows that the notebook was made in France, but we suspect that Darwin purchased the notebook in St Jago. Unlike all of the other Beagle field notebooks, Santiago has a label pasted on both covers. This seems to be a practice Darwin adopted with his post-voyage notebooks (viz. the transmutation and R. N. Notebooks).

Naturally, entries tend to be telegraphic in style and (as is normal in field notebooks, with the spine parallel to the lines of writing), the lines are often only a few words long. In the transcriptions presented here line breaks are ignored to aid readability, except where it is clear that a new sentence or topic is introduced.

Summarising the content of the notebooks in a few paragraphs would not only be impossible, but also rather pointless since we already have Barlow's 1945 unsurpassably engaging précis. Even Barlow at times had to admit defeat in trying to convey an impression of the hundreds of pages of geological descriptions, diagrams and speculations which fill great swathes of the notebooks, especially those used during 1834 and 1835. A series of quotes, in more or less chronological order, at least proves the potential of the notebooks:

'Solitude on board enervating heat comfort hard to look forward pleasures in prospect do not wish for cold night [delicious] sea calm sky not blue' [Cape de Verds Notebook, p. 46b]

'View at first leaving Rio sublime & picturesque intense colours blue prevailing tint large plantations of sugar & rustling coffee: mimosa natural veil' [Rio Notebook, p. 2a]

'Always think of home' [Buenos Ayres Notebook, p. 4b]

'The gauchos …look as if they would cut your throat and make a bow at the same time' [Falkland Notebook, p. 34a]

'Nobody knows pleasure of reading till a few days of such indolence' [B. Blanca Notebook, p. 12a]

'Most magnificently splendid the view of the mountains' [Valparaiso Notebook, p. 78a]

'Scenery very interesting – Had often wondered how Tierra del F would appear if elevated' [Santiago Notebook, p. 35a]

'Rode down to Port, miserable rocky desert. –' [Copiapo Notebook, p. 14a]

'But everything exceeded by ladies, like mermaids; could not keep eyes away from them' [Galapagos Notebook, p. 18a]

The following diagram attempts to show the periods of time over which Darwin used the notebooks during the voyage. As Barlow explained, several of the notebooks were used at different times, and sometimes more than one notebook was 'in play' at any one time, so that the relationships between the notebooks were at times quite complex. We should stress that this diagram only shows that a notebook was used in any particular month. The actual text will need to be consulted to see whether this was many pages of continuous use, or a few dateable jottings.

The notebooks are of variable length. The total length of all fifteen previously unpublished field notebooks is 116,000 words. It is worth noting that there are a small number of entries (mainly notes and drawings) which, although contemporary, are not in Darwin's hand.

It is possible to give some general impressions of how Darwin’s use of the notebooks gradually shifted throughout the voyage. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the there is a symmetry to the use of the notebooks in that their use gradually built up during the first year of the voyage, reached a plateau in the middle years, them tailed off in the last year. The first three notebooks gradually get longer, then there is a big ‘jump up’ to the Falklands Notebook which is not only almost twice as long as its predecessors but for the first time is routinely used for lengthy description. Darwin maintained this ‘Falklands’ style of use through the three ‘South American’ years of the voyage, but it ‘spiked’ quite extraordinarily in the St Fe Notebook of which the bulk dates from early 1835. The daily rate of note-taking starts to drop off noticeably after Darwin left South America and it is important to realise that St Fe is seven times longer than the two shortest notebooks, which are those used at the beginning and end of the voyage.

The Santiago Notebook was being used at the same time as St Fe and seems to mark a new development in Darwin’s note-taking. In Santiago for the first time he started to split off his theoretical notes from his more observational notes and kept Santiago for theory until it was ‘joined’ by the exclusively theoretical R.N. Notebook in May 1836. This is a new interpretation of Santiago and R.N. as previous scholars have assumed not only that use of Santiago ceased when R.N. started, but that the transition from field notes to theory notes is to be seen in R.N. whereas we believe it is in Santiago.

We present the notebooks here in their entirety for the first time and for each notebook we have provided an individual introduction. These introductions are intended to assist the general reader to understand more fully than may be possible just from the notebook texts what exactly Darwin was doing in any particular place or on any particular date. To make it easy to compare the notebook entries with other Darwin manuscripts, such as for example his Diary or letters, we always use the place names he used. In cases where this differs from the present-day name, on first mention we provide the present day place name in square brackets.

Although there can be no substitute for reading the notebooks themselves, we hope that the introductions if read in sequence would give the general reader a good idea of Darwin’s scientific development during the voyage. To this end we have used the earlier introductions to ‘set the scene’ and to introduce the key scientific issues facing Darwin and his mentors back in England. As the voyage progresses the introductions go into more and more detail as Darwin climbs metaphorically and actually into higher and higher realms of geology.

While the notebooks are overwhelmingly geological they also record Darwin’s field work in botany and zoology (‘natural history’) and his observations in those fields which came to dominate Darwin’s scientific career after the voyage. We have, therefore, devoted perhaps disproportionate attention on ‘natural history’ as the introductions move forward in time. In particular, we discuss Darwin’s gradual accumulation of evidence that something is wrong with received wisdom concerning the ‘death’ and more dramatically the ‘birth’ of species, even when this evidence is only scrappily recorded in the notebooks. This discussion culminates with Darwin’s breakthrough ‘one line’ realisation in the Galapagos Notebook that the land birds there are American, implying an historical origin on the mainland rather than a special creation to suit volcanic island conditions. Our final introduction reflects on Darwin’s clear loss of belief in God’s role in nature, triggered by watching a humble ant-lion catching its prey, an event not even mentioned in the Sydney Notebook.

We are extremely grateful to English Heritage, and especially to the curator of Down House, Tori Reeve, for allowing us to access and publish online transcriptions of the notebooks.

Gordon Chancellor, Kees Rookmaaker and John van Wyhe

June 2008

See also the extensive introduction to the Galapagos Notebook.

The notebooks:

'Cape de Verds Fernando Noronha Bahia, Abrohlos Rio de Janeiro City' (1-6.1832).
Introduction Text EH1.4 [English Heritage 88202324]

'Rio de Janeiro excursion city. M. Video Bahia Blanca' (4.1832, 6.1832-10.1832).
Introduction Text EH1.10 [English Heritage 88202330]

'Buenos Ayres (city) Beagle Channel Ascent of P. Desire Creek.' (11-12.1832-2.1833; 12.1833).
Introduction Text EH1.12 [English Heritage 88202332]

'Falkland Maldonado (excursion) Rio Negro to Bahia Blanca' (2-5.1833; 8.1833).
Introduction Text EH1.14 [English Heritage 88202334]

'B. Blanca to Buenos Ayres' (9-10.1833).
Introduction Text EH1.11 [English Heritage 88202331]

'Buenos Ayres. St. Fe and Parana. — Cordillera of Chile' (9-11.1833; 3-4.1835).
Introduction Text EH1.13 [English Heritage 88202333]

'Banda Oriental S. Cruz.' (11.1833, 4-5.1834).
Introduction Text EH1.9 [English Heritage 88202329]

'Port Desire — Famine Wollaston Isl^d Navarin Is^d. E. Falkland Isl^d Measurements of curved hills East coast of Chiloe Boat excursion Chonos S. Carlos'. (1-4.1834, 11-12.1834).
Introduction Text EH1.8 [English Heritage 88202328]

'Valparaiso up Aconcagua to St Jago' (8.1834).
Introduction Text EH1.15 [English Heritage 88202335]

'Santiago Book.' (9.1834; 2.1835-9.1838?).
Introduction Text EH1.18 [English Heritage 88202338]

'Galapagos. Otaheite Lima' (1835).
Introduction Text Image Text & Image EH1.17 [English Heritage 88202337]

'Valparaiso to Coquimbo. Coquimbo valley' (4-5.1835).
Introduction Text EH1.16 [English Heritage 88202336]

'Coquimbo to Copiapo' (6.1835).
Introduction Text EH1.7 [English Heritage 88202327]

'Copiapò. Despoblado Isle of France Cape of Good Hope. excursion St Helena.' (6-9.1835; 5-9.1836).
Introduction Text EH1.6 [English Heritage 88202326]

'Sydney Mauritius' (1-4.1836).
Text EH1.3 [English Heritage 88202323]

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