ABSTRACT
Charles Darwin himself has told us the striking factors which during the voyage of the Beagle forced him to question his old beliefs in Creation and seek a new law. Malthus may have been the spark, but there could have been no explosion to be heard later around the world if Darwin had not by 1838 become a keg of gunpowder. Early summer of 1844 is the third milestone in the actual preparation of Darwin’s Origin of Species through Natural Selection. He rewrote his abstract of 1842, expanding it into a manuscript of 231 pages, with blank leaves for amplification. The “little zoology” that Darwin spoke of in 1845 was to become his chief occupation in 1846 and hold him for eight years on his monumental work on barnacles. The outstanding event of the following year was Darwin’s taking Gray more completely into his confidence—Gray having shown a readiness to listen to his “heterodox conclusion.”.
