Darwin's children drew all over the "On the Origin of Species" manuscript (2014)

Yesterday was Darwin Day, marking the 205th anniversary of the great naturalist’s birth on February 12, 1809. One of the great things about Darwin is that a huge amount of his work is digitized and freely available via sites like Darwin Online. Interested browsers can also check out the Darwin Manuscripts Project, a collaborative initiative based at the American Museum of Natural History. Here you can read through Darwin’s personal notes, including gems like his scratched out book title ideas. There are also a number of nature drawings that Darwin prepared while writing his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). Here, for example, is Darwin’s rather skillful drawing of the stamen of a Strelitizia flower: But there are other drawings in Darwin’s papers that defy explanation - until we remember that Darwin and his wife Emma (who, famously, was also his cousin) had a huge family of ten children. Scholars believe that a young Francis Darwin, the natur ... Read full article.