Charles Darwin – The Early YearsI must be here allowed to return my most sincere thanks to the Reverend Professor Henslow,
who, when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, was one of the chief means of giving me
a taste for natural history,– who, during my absence, took charge of the collections I sent
home, and by his correspondence directed my endeavours. It was he who, since my return,
has constantly rendered me every assistance which the kindest friend could offer.Darwin considered himself hopeless at mathematics and hated the Classics but
he managed to gain a creditable pass in his final year. Of his academic career he
wrote: ‘During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted ... as
completely as at Edinburgh and school’. His real interest was in natural history and he
was entranced by the book Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of
the New Continent by the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, which describes
his five years and 15,000 kilometres of travel in South America between 1796 and
1801, with his travelling companion Aimé Bonpland. During their travels a mule
carried a trunk containing their scientific instruments – a compass, a sextant to measure
latitude and longitude, an instrument to measure magnetic variation, a thermometer,
a barometer and an instrument to measure humidity. Humboldt conceived a bold new
vision of nature that still influences the way we understand the natural world today
as he saw the earth as one great living organism where everything was connected. He
conceived the concept of the web of life and saw how plants, animals and humans are
connected through the food chain. In Venezuela he describes the devastating effects
of deforestation caused by colonial plantations. Climbing Mount Chimborazo in Peru
he came up with the idea of climatic zones and noted the corresponding changes in
vegetation as he climbed higher up the mountain:
We were constantly climbing through clouds. In many places, the ridge was not wider than
eight or ten inches. To our left was a precipice of snow whose frozen crust glistened like
glass. On our right lay a fearful abyss, from 800 to 1,000 feet deep, huge masses of rocks
projecting from it ... A few rock lichens were seen above the snow lines, at a height of
16,920 feet. The last green moss we noticed about 2,600 feet lower down. A butterfly was
captured by M. Bonpland at a height of 15,000 feet and a fly was seen 1,600 feet higher.Humboldt sampled the waters of the different rivers because the Indians could tell
the difference by taste and he tasted the bark of different trees because, again, the
Indians could tell the difference by taste. Humboldt was interested in everything in the
natural world – plants, animals, birds, rocks and water.
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