Arrears blogging: June 28: Charles Darwin, bumblling detective

First of all, I apologize for being so dilatory with the arrears blogging (I still owe about 10 days) -- it's just that real work has come, and not a moment to soon. I do intend to finish the thing so I can gather it all in one place. You have my half-assed guarantee on it!

The thing that charms me about Darwin is that he's not afraid to look ridiculous (remember when he hung out watching crabs and coconuts?). Today he has a "Mr. Bean Goes To Argentina" style experience:

One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls [the bolas, a kind of three-balled slingshot -- ed] round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush; and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and, like magic, caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured. Luckily he was an old practised animal, and knew what it meant; otherwise he would probably have kicked till he had thrown himself down. The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself.

Darwin would be a hell of a fictional detective, because he seems all English and clumsy and cutting a comic figure, but he's also intensely interested about why things are -- a long passage begins, "The general, and almost entire absence of trees in Banda Oriental is remarkable." This leads him to muse on why the Falklands don't have the same trees as nearby Tierra del Fuego, but, after considering a number of factors, he gives up; this also is admirable in fictional detectives, because it would allow the cops to bring in the wrong guy and use up a big chunk of your novel. I guess all scientists are detectives, really, but Darwin seems more open to telling us how ludicrous he looks; maybe because he has the confidence of the self-funded. And, of course, he nailed the biggest perp of all, the guy behind the Genesis project.

December 27: Mmmm, tortoise urine

You may have seen this picture before:


These are Darwin's finches -- similar birds with different beaks and so, different species. Darwin encountered them on his famous visit to the Galapagos and he writes:

The remaining land-birds form a most singular group of finches, related to each other in the structure of their beaks, short tails, form of body and plumage: there are thirteen species, which Mr. Gould has divided into four sub-groups...

Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.

One might fancy that, and, of course, Darwin would go on to fancy that and more. But, while Darwin may be a saint of science, he is also an aesthete -- which is not unusual among scientists, I have found; many if not most of them know more about the arts than artists know about science. We saw him passing judgement on New Zealand a few days ago, and now there's this: "All the plants have a wretched, weedy appearance, and I did not see one beautiful flower." If he weren't so excited about the finches, you'd almost guess he was pouting.

But my favorite thing is the part about the tortoise urine:

When the tortoise arrives at the spring, quite regardless of any spectator, he buries his head in the water above his eyes, and greedily swallows great mouthfuls, at the rate of about ten in a minute... For some time after a visit to the springs, their urinary bladders are distended with fluid, which is said gradually to decrease in volume, and to become less pure. The inhabitants, when walking in the lower district, and overcome with thirst, often take advantage of this circumstance, and drink the contents of the bladder if full: in one I saw killed, the fluid was quite limpid, and had only a very slightly bitter taste.

I have two reactions: 1. I'm sure Anthony Bourdain has done this already, and 2. Now you know why Coca-Cola was so popular when they started selling it around the world. I might also speculate that, once you've seen a man drink tortoise pee, it engenders a certain skepticism in the claims of his special divinity.

December 22: "What a dump!" -- Charles Darwin

I guess when you've been at sea for four years, ocean views no longer do it for you.

I'll just give away the ending of today's excerpt from "Voyage of the Beagle" -- though I realize I did this yesterday:

I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found in Tahiti; and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society. Neither is the country itself attractive.

Somebody go put that up at TripAdvisor!

If I were smarter, if I had read Lèvi-Strauss in college like the cool kids (that's how I knew I wasn't a cool kid; one of many ways, believe me), Darwin's distaste for New Zealand would be occasion for interesting insights on cultural imperialism. However, screw that. Instead I observe that Darwin appears to have disliked the place because it resembled a fraternity:

But their persons and houses are filthily dirty and offensive: the idea of washing either their bodies or their clothes never seems to enter their heads. I saw a chief, who was wearing a shirt black and matted with filth, and when asked how it came to be so dirty, he replied, with surprise, “Do not you see it is an old one?” Some of the men have shirts; but the common dress is one or two large blankets, generally black with dirt, which are thrown over their shoulders in a very inconvenient and awkward fashion. A few of the principal chiefs have decent suits of English clothes; but these are only worn on great occasions.

Like when you're trying to convince the Dean not to throw you out. Oh, and here's a former frat president-type, to the life (who, I might add, is also heavily tattooed):

Physiognomy here spoke the truth; this chief had been a notorious murderer, and was an arrant coward to boot. At the point where the boat landed, Mr. Bushby accompanied me a few hundred yards on the road: I could not help admiring the cool impudence of the hoary old villain, whom we left lying in the boat, when he shouted to Mr. Bushby, “Do not you stay long, I shall be tired of waiting here.”

I swear, all that guy needs is a bluetooth in his ear. I can see why Darwin, a quiet man, one of the nerds, was put off. Also understandable is his McDonalds-in-the-Champs-Élysées moment:

After having passed over so many miles of an uninhabited useless country, the sudden appearance of an English farm-house, and its well-dressed fields, placed there as if by an enchanter’s wand, was exceedingly pleasant. ...Around the farm-yard there were stables, a thrashing-barn with its winnowing machine, a blacksmith’s forge, and on the ground ploughshares and other tools: in the middle was that happy mixture of pigs and poultry, lying comfortably together, as in every English farm-yard.

I suppose this is a little culturally imperialist too, but come on, people -- the guy had been four years at sea! Of course, it works both ways too:

There is not nearly so much tattooing as formerly; but as it is a badge of distinction between the chief and the slave, it will probably long be practised. So soon does any train of ideas become habitual, that the missionaries told me that even in their eyes a plain face looked mean, and not like that of a New Zealand gentleman.

Finally, all this New Zealand talk gives me an excuse to include my favorite Flight of the Conchords song. No, not "Business Time." This one, which, appropriately, is about understanding other cultures:

October 2: Charles Darwin's Reporting Includes, But Is Not Limited To, Atrocities

Different Chuck D., although the working title for "Origin of Species" was "Welcome To The Terrordome."

Darwin's hanging out in Argentina, waiting for the Beagle to pick him up and take him back to civilization, and it gives him a chance to write a bunch of what I believe they call three-dot items, had three dots been invented in 1839. He's interested in everything! Indians, for example:

One glance at the rastro tells these people a whole history. Supposing they examine the track of a thousand horses, they will soon guess the number of mounted ones by seeing how many have cantered; by the depth of the other impressions, whether any horses were loaded with cargoes; by the irregularity of the footsteps, how far tired; by the manner in which the food has been cooked, whether the pursued travelled in haste; by the general appearance, how long it has been since they passed. ...With the sun for their guide, mare’s flesh for food, their saddle-cloths for beds,—as long as there is a little water, these men would penetrate to the end of the world.

Also, imperialist atrocities against Indians are also interesting:

My informer said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and so strike his pursuer. “I however struck him with my sabre to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat with my knife.” This is a dark picture; but how much more shocking is the unquestionable fact, that all the women who appear above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood! When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, he answered, “Why, what can be done? they breed so!”

...The escape of the Indians to the south of the Rio Negro, where in such a vast unknown country they would be safe, is prevented by a treaty with the Tehuelches to this effect;—that Rosas pays them so much to slaughter every Indian who passes to the south of the river, but if they fail in so doing, they themselves are to be exterminated.

Also? Somebody found an arrowhead!

He told me it was found near the island of Cholechel, and that they are frequently picked up there. It was between two and three inches long, and therefore twice as large as those now used in Tierra del Fuego: it was made of opaque cream-coloured flint, but the point and barbs had been intentionally broken off. It is well known that no Pampas Indians now use bows and arrows.

It's like a letter from a summer camp where you can go watch a real live genocide. I suppose when you've spent a sea voyage watching the nature red in tooth and claw, the brutalities of man v. man start to seem inevitable/natural.

July 24: Thanks, Chuck

Maybe today's reading is meant to show Darwin's interest in any natural phenomena, not just the biology. Or maybe it's meant to contrast his patient scientific worrying of a problem with the natives' more superstitious theories. But to me, living in Los Angeles, it's just meant to be scary:

The earthquake commenced at half-past eleven o’clock in the forenoon. If it had happened in the middle of the night, the greater number of the inhabitants (which in this one province must amount to many thousands) must have perished, instead of less than a hundred: as it was, the invariable practice of running out of doors at the first trembling of the ground, alone saved them. In Concepcion each house, or row of houses, stood by itself, a heap or line of ruins; but in Talcahuano, owing to the great wave, little more than one layer of bricks, tiles, and timber, with here and there part of a wall left standing, could be distinguished. From this circumstance Concepcion, although not so completely desolated, was a more terrible, and if I may so call it, picturesque sight...

I got your picturesque right here:

Darwin continues, unhelpfully:

Earthquakes alone are sufficient to destroy the prosperity of any country. If beneath England the now inert subterranean forces should exert those powers, which most assuredly in former geological ages they have exerted, how completely would the entire condition of the country be changed! What would become of the lofty houses, thickly packed cities, great manufactories, the beautiful public and private edifices? If the new period of disturbance were first to commence by some great earthquake in the dead of the night, how terrific would be the carnage! England would at once be bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of violence and rapine would remain uncontrolled. In every large town famine would go forth, pestilence and death following in its train.

I haven't read enough of Chuck to know whether the exclamation points are characteristic. But he is very excited here, isn't he? (Of course, here in California in the 21st century, we don't need to fret as much about the lost papers, for all our important public records are backed up onto a set of 5 1/4-inch floppy disks. I also like that Darwin's worries are 1) what will happen to all the papers? and then, 2) violence and rapine. That does seem characteristic.)

But would there really be violence and rapine? Darwin's own observations don't seem to confirm it:

...Pools of salt-water were still standing amidst the ruins of the houses, and children, making boats with old tables and chairs, appeared as happy as their parents were miserable. It was, however, exceedingly interesting to observe, how much more active and cheerful all appeared than could have been expected. It was remarked with much truth, that from the destruction being universal, no one individual was humbled more than another, or could suspect his friends of coldness—that most grievous result of the loss of wealth.

As the adage says, a rising tide lifts all boats, unless it rises too much, then they're all destroyed.

I think I'm going to go make sure all the cabinet doors with the earthquake latches are closed now.

June 20: Charles Darwin, sexy beast

The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice, according to Mr. D:

The common people [in Tahiti], when working, keep the upper part of their bodies quite naked; and it is then that the Tahitians are seen to advantage. They are very tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, and well-proportioned. It has been remarked, that it requires little habit to make a dark skin more pleasing and natural to the eye of an European than his own colour. A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian, was like a plant bleached by the gardener’s art compared with a fine dark green one growing vigorously in the open fields.

Survival of the fittest indeed! Note also that, in personal appearance, the women "are far inferior in every respect to the men."

One of the things I have come to enjoy about Darwin is his artlessness. In the various excerpts from the "Voyage" and the "Origin" (for Darwin gets two volumes in the Harvard Classics -- that progressive thing again), you never see him out to destroy competing theories. Instead, he's almost more like a kid; when he is in nature (or "Nature") he notices something and wonders, "How does it work"? In the opening of today's reading, he wonders how come the birds on the Galapgos are so tame:

As the birds are so tame there, where foxes, hawks, and owls occur, we may infer that the absence of all rapacious animals at the Galapagos, is not the cause of their tameness here. The upland geese at the Falklands show, by the precaution they take in building on the islets, that they are aware of their danger from the foxes; but they are not by this rendered wild towards man. This tameness of the birds, especially of the waterfowl, is strongly contrasted with the habits of the same species in Tierra del Fuego, where for ages past they have been persecuted by the wild inhabitants.

And in a footnote to this passage, there is real wonder:

There is much, as Dr. Richardson well remarks, utterly inexplicable connected with the different degrees of shyness and care with which birds conceal their nests. How strange it is that the English wood-pigeon, generally so wild a bird, should very frequently rear its young in shrubberies close to houses!

First of all, "shrubberies," but also, where pigeons do or don't build their nests doesn't even seem like much of a strange fact to the normal person, but for Darwin it's exclamation-point worthy.

But, as the quote indicates at the beginning, Darwin is a man of appetites:

When in the evening I descended from the mountain, a man, whom I had pleased with a trifling gift, met me, bringing with him hot roasted bananas, a pine-apple, and cocoa-nuts. After walking under a burning sun, I do not know anything more delicious than the milk of a young cocoa-nut. Pine-apples are here so abundant that the people eat them in the same wasteful manner as we might turnips. They are of an excellent flavor-perhaps even better than those cultivated in England; and this I believe is the highest compliment which can be paid to any fruit.

Better than English pineapples! You don't mean it!

Apr 2: Whoo-hoo! Teacher screws up!

So I'm partway through today's reading of Darwin when I come upon this paragraph:

Those alone who have tried it, know how delicious it is to be seated in such shade, and drink the cool pleasant fluid of the cocoa-nut. In this island there is a large bay-like space, composed of the finest white sand...

And I thought, "Haven't I read this before?" Indeed I have -- a little more than two weeks ago. And I tell you, I felt like my kids did when I took them to school the day the heating broke and they sent everyone home. Even though I like Darwin, I like my days off too.

I am, however, beginning to suspect laziness back in 1909 about making up these assignments. It's almost as though they never expected anyone to take them seriously. Of course, they drank more at lunch back then also, so maybe that's the reason.

The reading prior to that has two interesting elements. First is the business with the spoon that the DRG was so excited about:

A large wooden spoon dressed in garments, and which had been carried to the grave of a dead man, they pretend becomes inspired at the full of the moon, and will dance and jump about. After the proper preparations, the spoon, held by two women, became convulsed, and danced in good time to the song of the surrounding children and women.

"It was a most foolish spectacle," as Darwin writes. Darwin was smart, but he didn't quite see the power of the household object.


The other passage that caught my eye is how Darwin, who speculates on why a particular coral might have died, and how a stone might have drifted to otherwise stoneless islands (in the roots of a dead tree), finds himself baffled by one thing:

I can hardly explain the reason, but there is to my mind much grandeur in the view of the outer shores of these lagoon-islands.

Doesn't that seem a little robotic, a little "What is...friend?" to you? Why wouldn't there be grandeur in seeing these small islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? It's also possible that Darwin, who's so used to seeing things at the micro level, is a little baffled by the big emotion. Such as one might feel when his reading is cut in half! So long, suckas.

Mar 16: Darwin Spring Break!

This won't be long; I have spent much of the day driving the boy to the camp he's going to for Spring Break and then driving myself back, so I am road-weary, trucker-song weary. Wouldn't it be great to be on a tropic island...with Charles Darwin?

To see a field of glittering white sand, representing water, with the cocoa-nut trees extending their tall and waving trunks around the margin, formed a singular and very pretty view.

No beach novels for Darwin, though -- he has the book of Life:

I have before alluded to a crab which lives on the cocoa-nuts; it is very common on all parts of the dry land, and grows to a monstrous size: it is closely allied or identical with the Birgos latro.

You can see why he doesn't choose Fort Lauderdale. About two-thirds of this reading is walking us through the differences in kinds of reefs, which isn't that interesting to me -- and, honestly, I believe we're destroying all the reefs anyway, so why indulge in nostalgia? But the crab adventures, that part's got a little more action.

The thing that I like in Darwin is his firsthand close observation -- not so much, for me, because I'm interested in the observation, but because I like to think of this bearded Victorian gentleman lying on the ground watching a crab trying to crack a coconut:

The crab begins by tearing the husk, fibre by fibre, and always from that end under which the three eyeholes are situated; when this is completed, the crab commences hammering with its heavy claws on one of the eye-holes till an opening is made. Then turning round its body, by the aid of its posterior and narrow pair of pincers, it extracts the white albuminous substance.

In my imagination, Darwin does this wearing either A) full black-frock-coat Victoriania, or B) an old-timey swimming-costume with horizontal stripes. And zinc oxide on his nose -- it's the South Sea, after all.

And the best part is that there's no natural-selection theory in this excerpt, so your Baptist friends can enjoy it too.

Jan 29: The Road to Tierra Del Fuego

I was never raised to think of much of a conflict between Jesus and Darwin, but thanks to the culture wars there now is; so it’s funny to see Darwin follow Thomas a Kempis, making a “careful and vitally interesting study of that land and its ill-fated inhabitants.” Darwin gets his own volume, so we can regard him as at least as important as Robert Burns.

-- Here's another example of the argument thing I was talking about the other day:

Tierra del Fuego, first arrival—Good Success Bay—An Account of the Fuegians on board—Interview with the Savages—Scenery of the Forests—Cape Horn—Wigwam Cove—Miserable Condition of the Savages— Famines—Cannibals— Matricide—Religious Feelings—Great Gale—Beagle Channel—Ponsonby Sound—Build Wigwams and settle the Fuegians—Bifurcation of the Beagle Channel—Glaciers—Return to the Ship—Second Visit in the Ship to the Settlement—Equality of Condition amongst the Natives

Now you’ve read the whole chapter!

Darwin says:

I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement.

Why are they savage? Because they’re shouting and telling them where to land, that's why -- not that different than what us civilized people would do now. Actually, a lot of us civilized people would probably not want different-colored boat people to land, but these were more innocent times.

(As an aside, I will admit here that my knowledge of the dates of the theory of evolution are pretty hazy. Maybe it’s because of the Scopes trial that makes me think that the theory is a late 19th-century development, like the player piano or something. But James Madison was still alive when Darwin was on the Beagle. )

In Darwin's defense, he notes that the savages are painted like people in the opera "Der Freischutz." So maybe they’re not so civilized. Or maybe they were putting on a production of Der Freischutz when the Beagle landed! I bet Darwin didn’t think of that.

He also tries to look on the other hand:

They could repeat with perfect correctness each word in any sentence we addressed them, and they remembered such words for some time. Yet we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish apart the sounds in a foreign language. Which of us, for instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence of more than three words? All savages appear to possess, to an uncommon degree, this power of mimicry.... How can this faculty be explained? is it a consequence of the more practised habits of perception and keener senses, common to all men in a savage state, as compared with those long civilized?

Still, all this “savages” and “civilized” diction is making him sound like Commander McBragg to me, especially because they’ve named one of their Fuegans guides “York Minster," which is a building, I believe. On the other hand we named one of our great heroes "Refrigerator" Perry.

As a lifelong urban man, however, I despise the idea that those who are close to nature are more virtuous than us city folk with our bookstores and leash laws, and Darwin is of like mind, in a way:

At night, five or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals. Whenever it is low water, winter or summer, night or day they must rise to pick shell-fish from the rocks; and the women either dive to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line without any hook, jerk out little fish. If a seal is killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale is discovered, it is a feast; and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi. They often suffer from famine.

Think of how far we’ve advanced, to the point where we’ve invented the Cheeto. And speaking of those whose way of life we look down on:

Although such reflections [i.e., why the hell do these people choose to live here? – ed.] must at first seize on the mind, yet we may feel sure that they are partly erroneous. There is no reason to believe that the Fuegians decrease in number; therefore we must suppose that they enjoy a sufficient share of happiness, of whatever kind it may be, to render life worth having. Nature by making habit omnipotent, and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the productions of his miserable country.

The “effects” of habit are hereditary? I’m not sure what that means, nor that the Fuegian is fitted by nature to live in Tierra del Fuego. I can see where, if you didn’t have the Fuegian culture and knowledge, you’d shrivel (picture Vince Vaughn in a fish-out-of-water movie set in Tierra Del Fuego); but, if you were sufficiently hardy, you could make it (Vince Vaughn befriends a native (Russell Peters) and learns to wear the blubber poncho, which is a hilarious scene we can use in the trailer.)

I guess this is the only anthropology we're going to get in the Harvard Classics -- the kind that lends itself to a Vince Vaughn movie.