Evolution and Wonder: Understanding Charles Darwin

About the Image

This elevation map of a coral reef island is a hand-drawn water-color sketch by Charles Darwin, date unknown.

+ (photo: Cambridge University Library)

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(Reprinted with permission of Syndics of Cambridge University Library, DAR 71:54)

» listen (mp3, 1:28) to David Kohn provide a broader context to this passage and why Darwin wrote it

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p.292. Mac. has long rigmarole about plants being created to arrest mud &c at deltas.— Now my theory makes all organic beings perfectly adapted to all situations, where in accordance to certain laws they can live.— Hence the mistake they are created for them. If we once venture to say plants created to ~~arrest~~ prevent the valuable soil in its seaward course,— we sink into such contemptible queries, as why should the earth have drifted; why should plants require earth, why not created to live on alpine pinnacle? if we once to presume that God created plants to arrests earth, (like a Dutchman plants them to stop the moving sand) we do lower the creator to the standard of one of his weak creations.— All such facts are merely relations of one general law. the plants were no more created to arrest the earth, than the earth revolves to form rain to wash down earth, from the mountains upheaved by volcanic force, for these Marsh plants. All flow from some grand & simple laws.—