Fossils, Finches and Fuegians: Charles Darwin’s adventures and discoveries on the Beagle, 1832–1836 by Richard Keynes, HarperCollins, £25, ISBN 0007101899
NONE of the books about Darwin’s famous voyage seems to deal with it adequately. They either describe just an adventure, or treat it only as the source of the scientific observations and discoveries that led to Darwin’s famous shock to the fortress of accepted ideas about the origins of life. Richard Keynes aims to fix this with Fossils, Finches and Fuegians.
He opens with the reasons that got Darwin on the Beagle in the first place, including the appeal…
