Darwin, Charles Robert
Darwin, Charles Robert ( 1809 – 82 ),born at Shrewsbury, grandson of E. Darwin , and educated at Edinburgh University and Christ's College, Cambridge. He embarked in 1831 with Fitzroy as naturalist on the Beagle, bound for South America, returned in 1836 , and published in 1839 his Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle. His great work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection appeared in 1859 . Darwin had received from A. R. Wallace a manuscript containing a sketch of his theory. Building upon the Uniformitarian geology of Charles Lyell ( 1797 – 1875 ), which supposed a very great antiquity for the earth and slow, regular change, Darwin argued for a natural, not divine, origin of species. In the competitive struggle for existence, creatures possessing advantageous mutations would be favoured,...
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