Happy Birthday Charles Darwin

 Yep!  It was Charles' birthday. And Abe Lincoln's and my kid sister too. So pretty easy to remember.  In times past we've had cake in the Herbarium but cake and a viral pandemic don't mix well.  And TPP gets  out all the Darwin books he owns just so students can see them.  Heck, it's getting so faculty don't own such things as books either.  Sadly books and journals used to be a measure of how good you were as a scholar.  Once a month a visit to a big library would help keep in touch with the literature and you would solicit reprint copies of really good papers by sending a postcard.  You would buy reprint copies to give away, now you just download a pdf copy.  As a graduate student at least you got mail with reprints.  Of course Charles wrote books, not a 8-10 page journal research article.  Well Happy  Birthday anyways, Chalres, you would not like how some things have changed.

Join the HMS Beagle book club!

This is just great!  The mapping voyage of the HMS Beagle was to last at least a year. This was the voyage of discovery that launched Charles Darwin's career in case you have never read about the voyage in Darwin's first major publications.  Here's the ship's library recreated online so you can read what Darwin was reading!.  It'll take you some time to get through it all because it totals almost 200,000 pages, and a lot of the books were in French. And he had Smith's Grammar of Botany, a real oldie but goodie. 

Successful Darwin Day

Yesterday was a pretty successful Darwin Day. It's not a big celebration; only the biology majors are invited for a party to view a pretty good collection of Darwin's publications (TPP has a pretty good collection) and of course cake. So when you buy a pretty big cake and the students eat it all, you've had a good turnout. And, no sticky finger prints on the Darwin publications either. The idea is just to make our majors a bit more knowledgeable about Darwin's accomplishments.  Only one of them had actually read the Origin of Species, but she was surprised about all of Darwin's other books. Actually, the fact that most fascinated our students this year is that most of TPP's volumes were from editions published in the late 1800s, so nothing particularly valuable, but to today's students that is almost impossibly old. It was a good cake, florally decorated, but with dark blue frosting roses whose dye can go completely through the GI tract unchanged which makes for a rather surprising "out come".  The special event was reading the 22 questions asked by creationists posed after the Nye-Ham debate, mostly met with amusement, but while having answers, not comprehending why people would so respond. Ah, well, everything goes better with cake.

Happy Birthday, Charles, Abe, and my baby Sister

Here in Lincolnland, Abe's birthday is a pretty big deal.  Of course for us biologists, Charles Darwin's birthday is a big deal too in that this day is used to remember his contributions and encourage our students to be a bit more scholarly.  And it's also my kid sister's birthday, but we won't mention her age mostly because no matter what TPP is much older.  Unfortunately Tuesdays are a very busy day; the moss lab just doesn't set up or teach itself.  So for lack of time here's a link to Darwin, Darwinism, Darwinist, and Darwinian, all of which does seem a bit over used, but if ever you make a contribution as large as his, hopefully you'll be remembered for as well as Charles has.  Here's something you may not have seen, a complete list of Darwin's publications.  Copies of those in bold sit on TPP's bookshelves.

• 1835: Extracts from letters to Professor Henslow (privately printed, not for public sale)
• 1836: A LETTER, Containing Remarks on the Moral State of TAHITI, NEW ZEALAND, &c. – BY CAPT. R. FITZROY AND C. DARWIN, ESQ. OF H.M.S. 'Beagle.'
• 1838-43: Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle: published between 1839 and 1843 in five Parts (and nineteen numbers) by various authors, edited and superintended by Charles Darwin, who contributed sections to two of the Parts:
• 1838: Part 1 No. 1 Fossil Mammalia, by Richard Owen (Preface and Geological introduction by Darwin)
• 1838: Part 2 No. 1 Mammalia, by George R. Waterhouse (Geographical introduction and A notice of their habits and ranges by Darwin)
• 1839: Journal and Remarks (The Voyage of the Beagle)
• 1842: The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
• 1844: Geological Observations of Volcanic Islands
• 1846: Geological Observations on South America
• 1849: Geology from A Manual of scientific enquiry; prepared for the use of Her Majesty's Navy: and adapted for travellers in general., John F.W. Herschel ed.
• 1851: A Monograph of the Sub-class Cirripedia, with Figures of all the Species. The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes.
• 1851: A Monograph on the Fossil Lepadidae, or, Pedunculated Cirripedes of Great Britain
• 1854: A Monograph of the Sub-class Cirripedia, with Figures of all the Species. The Balanidae (or Sessile Cirripedes); the Verrucidae, etc.
• 1854: A Monograph on the Fossil Balanidæ and Verrucidæ of Great Britain
• 1858: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection (Extract from an unpublished Work on Species)
• 1859: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
• 1862: On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects
• 1868: Variation of Plants and Animals Under Domestication
• 1871: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
• 1872: The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals
• 1875: Movement and Habits of Climbing Plants
• 1875: Insectivorous Plants
• 1876: The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom
• 1877: The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species
• 1879: "Preface and 'a preliminary notice'" in Ernst Krause's Erasmus Darwin
• 1880: The Power of Movement in Plants
• 1881: The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms