Cambridge University Library reports two of Charles Darwin's notebooks stolen.

Cambridge University Library has reported two notebooks which were used by Charles Darwin stolen. One of the notebooks contains the first ever tree-of-life diagram drawn by Darwin in 1837, two decades ahead of the eventual publication of his theory of evolution in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, in 1859. The notebooks were last seen in November 2000, when they were taken out of the collection to be digitised, and their contents made available online, and were noted to be missing in January 2001, although at that time the library was undergoing extensive renovation work, and it was thought that the notebooks had been misplaced internally. However, they have not been rediscovered in several subsequent searches of the library's ten million or so manuscripts, and it has now been concluded that the notebooks are likely to have been stolen. The matter has been reproted to Cambridgeshire Police and Interpol, who are launching enquiries into the whereabouts of the items.

 

A notebook containing Darwin's original 1837 diagram of the tree of life, one of two such notebooks believed to have been stolen in late 2000 or early 2001. Cambridge University Library.

The precise value of the notebooks is unclear. It is thought that they would be worth tens of millios of pounds if it was possible to sell them on the open market, but any attempt to do legally would obviously be impossible, given the unique nature of the items. It is, however, possible that they may have been aquired by a private collector who has not realised the true value of the items, and an appeal has been launched by Cambridge University Library, who asking anyone with any information to contact them at
manuscriptappeal@lib.cam.ac.uk.

 

An appeal from Jessica Gardner of Cambridge University Library for any information that might help to determine the whereabouts of two of Charles Darwin's notebooks, which have been found to be missing from the library's collection. Cambridge University Library.

The notebooks are described as being roughly postcard-sized, with reddish brown covers, and were, at the time of their disappearance, kept in a blue box about the size of a standard paperback novel. The notebooks bear the letters 'B' and 'C' prominantly on their covers. Security procedures at Cambridge University Library have been updated significantly since the notebooks were last seen, with dedicated, climate-controlled strong rooms, specialist reading rooms, CCTV, enhanced access control to secure areas, and our participation in international networks on collections security.

 

One of Darwin's missing notebooks. Cambridge University Library.

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Wallace Archive goes online.

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was a Anglo-Welsh naturalist and surveyor jointly credited with Charles Darwin for the theory of Natural Selection. Despite being from considerably more humble origins than Darwin he was a gifted scientist, publishing his first scientific paper at the age of 19, and mounting a number of self funded expeditions to South America (along with fellow naturalist Henry Bates, from whom Batesian Mimicry takes its name) and the Malay Archipelago (modern Malaysia and Indonesia), with, unlike Darwin, the express intent of investigating 'the transmutation of species' (evolution).

Portrait of Wallace from his autobiography My Life, Vol. 1 (Chapman and Hall, London, 1905). Notes and Records of the Royal Society.

Wallace and Bates first travelled to Brazil in 1848, with the intention of funding their expedition by collecting specimens to sell to collectors. They spent their first year together, collecting specimens near Belém do Pará (Bethlehem on the Pará), before going their separate ways, Bates going on to explore the Tocatins and Amazon rivers for another decade, and Wallace spending four years mapping the Rio Negro, before returning to England in 1852.

Unfortunately Wallace was shipwrecked on the way home, losing all his specimens, but the shipment was insured, so while Wallace lost his specimens he received sufficient remuneration, combined with funds from the sale of specimens shipped in advance, to support himself in London while he wrote six further scientific papers and two books about his discoveries.

In 1854 Wallace sailed to the Malay Archipelago, where he made extensive studies of the wildlife of the islands, collecting over 125 000 specimens (including over 80 000 Beetles), and discovering what we now call the 'Wallace Line', an abrupt changeover between Southeast Asian and Australian Faunas, that runs between Bali and Lombok to the South and between Borneo and Sulawesi to the north. During this time he sent a version of his theories on evolution to Charles Darwin, which resulted in the two versions being published simultaneously in 1858. 

The Wallace Line. The Encyclopedia of Earth.

Wallace eventually returned to England in 1862, this time for good (excepting a lecture tour of the US in 1886-7). He married in 1866, and wrote a number of further books and papers, as well as editing works for Darwin and Lyle, among others. In later life he became involved with social issues, and campaigned for land reform in the UK, as well as currency reform, female emancipation, penal reform, proper regulation of sanatoriums, environmental protection, an end to European colonialism and against militarism and eugenics.

Wallace's archive has now been placed online on a new website, Wallace Online, based at the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore, intended to be a companion website to the Darwin Online project hosted by the University of Cambridge, and uses the same format. The project aims to place online a complete set of Wallace's publications, unpublished manuscripts, sample descriptions and other material.

An illustration from F.C. Pascoe's Longicornia Malayana; or, a descriptive catalogue of the species of the three longicorn families Lamiidæ, Cerambycidae and Prionidae, collected by Mr. A.R.Wallace in the Malay Archipelago. Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, 1864-69. Wallace Online.

See also John Snow's Cholera Map and Lost fossils of Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker rediscovered.

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Lost fossils of Charles Darwin and Joseph Hooker rediscovered.

The British Geological Survey has a collection of over 3 million fossils, gathered by palaeontologists all over the world in the two centuries since it was founded. With such a large collection, it is not surprising that the odd thing has been mislaid over the years. This means that researchers peering into the back of old draws occasionally make discoveries every bit as important as interesting as those made in the field. Nevertheless it came as a shock to palaeobotanist Howard Falcon-Lang of Royal Holloway, University of London, when he realized that the collection of fossil plants he found in a vault at the Survey's Keyworth facility had in fact been assembled by famous Victorian botanist Joseph Hooker, and included fossils gathered by Charles Darwin on his voyage on the HMS Beagle.

Joseph Hooker c.1851. By portrait artist George Richmond.

Hooker worked for the survey from February 1846 to October 1847, having already made his name as a scientist aboard the circum-Antarctic voyage of the HMS Erebus in 1839-43. During this time he was involved in exploration and mapping in Bristol and Somerset, and in the South Wales coalfields, and worked at the Survey's Museum of Economic Geology in London. His work on fossil plants was published in a three book memoir in 1848, by which time he had left the Survey to join an expedition to the Himalayas.

The material discovered at Keyworth is mostly in the form of thin section slides (geological samples cut thin enough to be mounted on a microscope slide and have a light shone through them) of fossil plants from the Carboniferous Coal Measures. The collection contains material collected by Hooker from the Sub-Antarctic Kerguelan Islands and the Macquarie Plains of Tasmania, as well as fossils from the UK Coal Measures, material collected by Darwin from Chiloe Island, off the coast of Chile, material from naturalist Henry Witham's Durham Collection (which includes material from Scotland, Yorkshire and the East China Sea - collected together in Durham), material collected by Harriet Henslow (Hooker's future wife), and material collected by other naturalists, many of them amateurs, in Antigua, Australia, Egypt, India, Jamaica, the Far East, the Isle of Portland, Wolverhampton and South Wales.

Thin section through a nodule containing club-moss cones of the Genus Strobili. About 310 million years old, from the Coal Measures of Yorkshire or Lancashire. Collector unknown.

Petrified wood collected near Whitby in Yorkshire in 1814, and thin sectioned by William Nicol (the inventor of the method) for Henry Witham for his Durham Collection.

Section through the cone of an Aruacaria (Monkey Puzzle) Tree. Collector unknown, the trees are from South America, though they have since become popular ornamentals in the UK.

The British Geological Survey has created an online museum exhibit, with information about the slides and the collectors, where some of the specimens can be viewed.

See also The Ediacaran Fauna: not animals after all? Identifying Triassic footprints, New dinosaurs from old draws and A re-evaluation of the Iwo Eleru skull.