The Boy Who Collected Beetles
From a Stepping Stone Year by Margaret Gooding

Charles! What have you brought home THIS timer 18-year-old Caroline asked. Charles, who was ten, showed her a cocoon, two pebbles, a piece of fern, and a dead beetle. He was a great collector. He loved to be out In woods and fields. His sharp eyes found butterflies, plants, stones, and other things.

When Charles was nine, he was sent to Dr.Butler's boarding school. But the school was only about a mile away, so he ran home and back easily.At school, he was taught Latin, Creek, and mathematics, none of which he liked. He worked hard at school, but he didn't get good marks and often disappointed his father. Dr. Darwin thought Charles needed to know Latin and Creek and mathematics to be successful. He didn't think Charles's interest in nature would amount to anything.

When Charles was 16, his father decided that he should go to Edinburgh to study medicine. But after two years the sight of blood made Charles sick, so Dr. Darwin sent him to Cambridge University to become a minister. Charles didn't much want to be a minister either, but he did want to please his father, so off he went.

Charles didn't study very hard, though he passed his exams. Instead he became a very enthusiastic beetle collector and was always looking for rare and new kinds. Once when he tore off some old bark from a tree, he found two very special beetles which he instantly grabbed, one in each hand. Then much to his excitement, he saw a third. How to catch it too? He popped the beetle from his right hand in his mouth, and then had to quickly spit it out, for it ejected some really awful tasting liquid which burned his tongue. He lost it, and the other one disappeared.

At that time, the British government was sending Captain Robert Fitzroy around the world to make some new maps of coastlines. A naturalist was needed on the Beagle to gather specimens of plants and animals. Charles Darwin was recommended and was very excited, but his father thought it would be a waste of time. He said, "If you can find any man of common sense who advises you to go, I will give my consent." Josiah Wedgwood II, Charles's uncle, thought it a splendid opportunity and convinced Dr. Darwin.

Charles sailed from England on December 26,1831, on a five-year adventure that changed his ideas and those of many people In the world.

When Charles set sail, almost everyone in the Christian world believed, as it says in the Bible, that everything looked as it had in the very beginning . . . dogs, cats, worms, butterflies, people, everything. Charles thought so too, but what he saw in the places where the Beagle landed gradually changed his mind.

In Argentina, he found the fossil bones of giant prehistoric beasts that looked like animals he knew, only much larger. One was a giant ground sloth that looked very much like the sloths he saw hanging head down from the branches of trees. Had the giant sloths all died out, or could they be the ancestors of the smaller ones he was seeing?

He spent five weeks on the Galapagos Islands and could hardly believe what he saw: lizards looked like dragons; tortoises required six men to lift them; plants, insects, and birds were like none he'd ever seen. Darwin studied everything. He noticed that the tortoises were different on each island. He saw that the beaks of the finches, which were not the same on each island, seemed to depend on what they found to eat. Those that ate berries had different beaks from those that caught insects. He thought a lot about this. Why was it so, when they were all finches? Was it possible that living things changed in some way when their surroundings changed?

Charles Darwin thought about this through-out his journey. He collected plants and animals and sent them to England. When he returned home, he studied them, performed experiments,and wrote and rewrote what: he discovered. After many years, he published a book, The Origin of the Species. He said living things -- like flowers, dogs, butterflies, and all other kinds -- have been on earth for thousands and thousands of years, and that they have gradually changed through the generations to be able to live in different kinds of places. The clergy disagreed because what he said didn't agree with the Bible; some called him the most dangerous man in England! Some scientists disagreed with him, because they believed that whatever they discovered had to fit with the Bible.A few clergy and scientists thought he had made important discoveries, though, and they persuaded others. Later, Charles Darwin was given the Copley medal of the Royal Society of London, the most important science award in England.

Seven years after he was given the medal, Darwin's book about the origin and evolution of people was published. It was called The Descent of Man People were outraged; "Mr. Darwin suggests we've descended from monkeys!" they said. But Charles didn't say that. He said that thousands and thousands of years ago, there was another creature. Both people and monkeys evolved from that animal, like two different branches growing from the same tree.

Charles Darwin was a very kind and loving man. He and his wife Emma had ten children with whom Charles spent a lot of time playing and talking. In one way this was easy because Charles had inherited money and didn't have to go to work to earn a living. But it was also hard, for he was often ill.

The Darwins lived in the country in a big house with lots of rooms, a garden, and a greenhouse. Two hours a day were "holy time" when Charles worked on his experiments and writings; no one interrupted him. The rest of his time he shared with his family and friends if he was well enough.

Charles was a collector all of his life and the house was full of all kinds of specimens. On the Beagle, he had begun to collect and study barnacles and he kept this up for many years. Once when one of his children was visiting a friend, he asked, "Where does your father keep his barnacles?" He thought all fathers collected them.

There was a Unitarian Church in Shrewsbury that Charles sometimes attended with his Uncle Erasmus. Not all Unitarians agreed with Charles's ideas about evolution when the books were published, for most of them, too, thought the Bible was literally true. But the search for truth has always been important to Unitarians and Universalists,and new scientific discoveries changed people's minds. Darwin's theories were accepted. Some of his theories have been changed over the years, but that would have been all right with him, for he was always willing to change his opinions if he were proven wrong. He sought the truth, and believed it could be found only with love. He said that prejudice and hate "hinder and blind [people] to truth. A scientist must only love."