December Book: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

Sorry for the picture quality

The HMS Beagle set sail from Davenport, England on Dec. 27, 1831. Charles Darwin was on board the Beagle when it circumnavigated the world. This voyage lasted for 5 years. During this trip, Darwin wrote the journals which made him famous. Of course, around this time, he was still in the early stages of his theory of evolution, the theory which made him even more famous, though not in a positive way.

The fact that I have read this book from cover to cover is a cause for wonder. It is no light reading, to be honest. It took me forever to finish it. It is... boring. And that is putting it lightly. If you are a naturalist, which I highly doubt, maybe you'll find it interesting. The problem is I'm not. And what may otherwise be a ground-breaking observation was translated into profuse bleeding at the pores to a layman like myself.

Consider this line: "I am inclined to suspect that thunderstorms are very common in the mouth of great rivers. Is it not possible that the mixture of large bodies of fresh and salt water may disturb the electrical equilibrium?"

The what?

But just because it is not something that I understand completely or find interesting doesn't make it less great. Not withstanding the fact that Darwin bored me into a deep slumber, I have the utmost respect for the guy. That focus. That concentration. That skill for analysis. It could not have been easy to determine that "female ostrich lays several eggs in the nest of several other females and the male ostrich undertakes all the cares of incubation". Could he had determine this if he just sat in the shade and observed a bunch of ostrich for an hour? Highly unlikely. It is possible that he spent days studying their habits while the possibility of being butchered to death by violent Indians was very real. Unfortunately, it may break Darwin's heart that none of these mean anything to me. What the hell do I care about ostriches? I don't even eat them.

So here is what I think about the Voyage. It is not for pleasure reading. The only reason I picked it up was because I promised to include more serious reading materials to my pile. I should have picked something less scientific. I do not recommend it as a topic for casual conversations with friends and significant others. I do not recommended it as a topic for conversations period. Unless you hate the person you are talking to and you want to kill them with boredom. If you are trying to impress someone, do not use your knowledge of this book. The person you are trying to impress will think that you are a pompous ass of a geek. Of course, there are attempts at poetry: "A most paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady part of the woods". And even attempts at, gasp, humor: "A profusion of food showed itself at dinner, where, if the tables did not groan, the guests surely did for everyone is expected to eat of every dish." But let me state this for the record: humor is not synonymous to Darwin.

In closing, let me leave you with another of Darwin's attempts to be funny: "The carancha  bird destroys young lambs by tearing the umbilical cord and it pursues the gallinazo until that bird is compelled to vomit up the carrion it may have recently gorged. All these facts show that it is a bird of very versatile habits and considerable ingenuity." Versatile? Ingenious? Would you have said that of a human who does the same things to his fellow beings? What a joke.