Carnivorous plants, beguiling vegetables capable of attracting, trapping, and digesting animal prey, have fascinated generations of botanists on nearly every continent. However, there is perhaps no better way to trace their rise to cultural prominence than through the eyes of the Darwin family. The botanical legacy of Charles Darwin, his grandfather Erasmus, and son Francis, conveys the dramatic shift in how carnivorous plants were perceived by general botanical audiences from the late eighteenth century and into the twentieth. From poetic musings about their carnivorous habits to pulp fiction accounts of man-eating vegetal monsters, the BHL carnivorous plant collection offers a glimpse into the powerful spell these plants have cast over readers and observers through the centuries.

Charles Darwin was enamoured with carnivorous plants. As early as 1859, soon after encountering the sundew Drosera rotundifolia on an English heath, the author of On the Origin of Species wrote, “I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world” (Darwin Correspondence Project). By September 1860 he was working with Dionaea muscipula as well, and would later dub the Venus flytrap “one of the most wonderful” plants in the world (Darwin 1875, 286). Darwin’s rigorous experimentation with these enigmatic vegetal carnivores culminated in 1875 with the publication of Insectivorous Plants. This treatise laid the framework for the study of plant carnivory as it exists today and cemented the notion of carnivorous plants in the scientific and public imagination.

Yet Charles Darwin was neither the first nor the only one in his family to delight at the Venus flytrap and its murderous cohort. Indeed, his fascination with these plants developed over three generations of philosophical thought and scientific experimentation that included his grandfather and son. The family’s work with carnivorous plants reveals much about the enduring botanical legacy of Erasmus, Charles, and Francis Darwin.

Poetic Botany

The second part of Erasmus Darwin’s poem The Botanic Garden (1789) sought to display the Linnaean sexual system through poetic analogies of plant sexuality and human affairs, accompanied by Erasmus’ own botanical notes and observations. He carefully weaved together mythological and the physiological discussions through poetic prose and technical footnotes, appealing to a broad audience of general readers and botanical experts alike. His stanza on Drosera beautifully illustrates the tone of the work as a whole:

Queen of the marsh, imperial Drosera treads
Rush-fringed banks, and moss-embroider’d beds;
Redundant folds of glossy silk surround
Her slender waist, and trail upon the ground;
Five sister-nymphs collect with graceful ease,
Or spread the floating purple to the breeze;
And five fair youths with duteous love comply
With each soft mandate of her moving eye.
As with sweet grace her snowy neck she bows,
A zone of diamonds trembles round her brows,
Bright shines the silver halo, as she turns;
And, as she steps, the living lustre burns. (Darwin 1791, 24-25)

Erasmus considered the “viscous material” of the Drosera merely a mechanism to prevent “small insects from infesting the leaves,” “[a]s the ear-wax in animals seems to be in part designed to prevent fleas and other insects from getting into their ears” (Darwin 1789, 24). Darwin further relayed in his extensive notes to the reader that “[i]n the Dionaea Muscipula there is a still more wonderful contrivance to prevent the depredations of insects: […] so irritable, that when an insect creeps upon them, they fold up, and crush or pierce it to death” (Darwin 1789, 15). He had witnessed this “irritable” behavior of Dionaea firsthand in August 1788 at Ashburn Hall, Derbyshire, subsequently receiving a colored illustration of the flytrap from Maria Elizabetha Jacson.

Erasmus Darwin’s conviction that these mechanisms—“curious contrivance[s]” to “prevent various insects from plundering the honey, or devouring the seed”—were a defense against insects is perplexing, placing so much emphasis on the damage a tiny fly could inflict on these plants (Darwin 1789, 15). Was he perhaps allowing poetic metaphors to guide his understanding of biological phenomena? While painting a vivid picture of “The fell SILENE and her sisters fair,” who “[s]kill’d in destruction, spread the viscous snare,” he seemed to present his anthropomorphized botanical actors as righteous wardens rather than scheming hunters (Darwin 1789, 15).

Carnivorous plants continued to assert themselves in poetry and philosophical thought at the turn of the century. Some authors expressed incredulity and wonder at carnivory as such, as did the Irish poet Thomas Moore in Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806): “The Lord deliver us, Think of a vegetable being ‘carnivorous!’” (Moore, 156). Moore’s verse parallels William Bartram’s lively 1791 description, included in his Travels Through North and South Carolina: “But admirable are the properties of the extraordinary Dionaea muscipula! […] carnivorous vegetable!” (Bartram 1791, xiii).

Darwin’s ‘Most Wonderful’ Plants

It was not until 1860, when another Darwin, Charles, began pondering the lethal activities of sundews to make sense of the Venus flytrap and other suspected vegetal carnivores. Over the course of the next decade, he sporadically worked with the Droseraceae. Among those who facilitated his study of these plants were the American naturalist Mary Treat and Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, Darwin’s close friend and director of Kew Gardens, who supplied him with living specimens. Armed with this network of correspondents and the global resources of Kew, Darwin was able to carry out the investigations of carnivory from his backyard greenhouse in Downe.

In the early 1870s Darwin’s passion for these plants reached a fever pitch. While focusing mainly on Drosera, he simultaneously studied carnivory in Dionaea, Utricularia, Pinguicula, and Aldrovanda. Meanwhile, Hooker occupied himself with the pitcher plants Nepenthes, Sarracenia, and Cephalotus at Kew. Inspired by a visit to Darwin’s home, Dr. John Burdon-Sanderson, one of the most prominent physiologists of the nineteenth century, was also compelled to investigate the mysterious behavior of Dionaea.

Burdon-Sanderson’s experiments showed that Dionaea’s leaves closed only when unsuspecting prey disturbed the electric current running through the plant, just as animal muscles contract in response to stimulus. Darwin further elucidated the nature of this ingenious trapping mechanism. He realized that the plant had “learned” to determine the prey that was worth capturing. Of the three trigger hairs on each lobe of the leaf, two had to be touched within 20 seconds of each other to trigger the trap. Continuous stimulation would cause the trap to seal shut and begin digesting its prey, while smaller insects could simply slip out and the trap would reset. Part of Darwin’s enduring impact on biology was his work that examined such evolutionary adaptations through various botanical lenses, with carnivorous plants serving as a prime example.

Father and Son

Darwin’s son, Francis, carried on his father’s legacy in a variety of ways, including his own research of plant carnivory. Francis’s passion for carnivorous plants first stemmed from aiding his father in his work on Insectivorous Plants, in which he is credited with illustrating the tiny underwater traps of Aldrovanda and Utricularia. Drosera, however, was the resounding favorite of both father and son. Nearly two-thirds of Insectivorous Plants was dedicated to the sundew. Being privy to his father’s experiments, Francis sought to develop the book’s findings after the first edition was published.

Detractors of Charles Darwin’s carnivorous theory frequently pointed out that so-called carnivorous plants flourished in European hothouses year-round without any insect prey to feed on. Experiments that Darwin carried out while writing Insectivorous Plants sought to address this quandary but failed, as all the plants — fed or not — had died. Francis returned to the subject of his father’s beloved Drosera rotundifolia in June 1877, finding out that the sundews that had been ‘fed’ nearly doubled in seed production and size (Darwin 1878). Since these early experiments, many carnivorous genera have been proven to demonstrate increased size and biomass when the plants had access to insect prey. After his father’s death, Francis went on to publish a revised second edition of Insectivorous Plants in 1888, incorporating new discoveries by himself and others to enhance the scientific understanding of plant carnivory.

Botanical Bestiaries

Parallel to this shift in scientific illustration, an explosion of periodical literature featuring plant carnivory catapulted the Venus flytrap and its fellow vegetal carnivores into the public imagination. Fictional accounts of man-eating plants regularly featured in Anglo-American periodical literature at the end of the nineteenth century, perpetuating pseudo-scientific stories from fictional explorers encountering such horrors as the “Man-Eating Tree” of Madagascar or the “Vampire Vine” of Namibia (Prior 1939, 10-19).

 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, helped jumpstart this craze in 1880 with “The American’s Tale.” First published anonymously in the Christmas special of the London Society magazine, this short story centered around a man killed by a massive Venus flytrap in the Arizona wilderness. The legendary science fiction writer H.G. Wells also wrote of a botanist’s blood-sucking orchid in 1905, laying the foundations for alien man-eating plants featured in musical, film, and television adaptations of Little Shop of Horrors and Day of the Triffids, popular in the twentieth century (Price 2013).

In Conclusion

As countless stunning cultivars are grown commercially to fuel the demanding global plant trade, wild populations of carnivorous plants have become increasingly threatened by habitat destruction, poaching, pollution, and anthropogenic climate change. Nearly half of all carnivorous plants fall under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) risk categories, ranging from near threatened to critically endangered. Frequently appearing in special exhibitions and displays at botanic gardens around the world, these plants continue to draw the fascination of millions of visitors each year. As legions of individuals have struggled to find a place for them within various social and scientific contexts, carnivorous plants have become firmly established as organisms of towering cultural significance.

The Plant Humanities Initiative at Dumbarton Oaks takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the roles of plants in human affairs. This blog series, and the BHL carnivorous plant collection, were created in collaboration with the Plant Humanities Lab – an open access platform developed by Dumbarton Oaks and JSTOR. Find more information on the cultural history of the Venus flytrap and many other plants here.

References and Additional Suggested Reading

Bartram, William, and T. Cander. Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws : Containing an Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions : Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians : Embellished with Copper-Plates. Philadelphia : Printed by James and Johnson, 1791. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.109283

Darwin, Charles. Insectivorous Plants. London : J. Murray, 1875. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.99933

Darwin, Charles, and Francis Darwin. Insectivorous Plants. London : J. Murray, 1888. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.74

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2996,” accessed on 2 August 2021, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2996.xml

Darwin, Erasmus. The Botanic Garden. A Poem in Two Parts. Pt. I Containing the Economy of Vegetation. Pt. 2. the Loves of the Plants. With Philosophical Notes. The third edition. London : Printed for J. Johnson, 1791. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.143120

Darwin, Francis. Experiments on the Nutrition of Drosera rotundifolia. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 17(98), 17–31, 1878.

Ellis, John, Lockyer Davis, Carl von Linné, and James Roberts. Directions for Bringing over Seeds and Plants, from the East-Indies and Other Distant Countries, in a State of Vegetation : Together with a Catalogue of Such Foreign Plants as Are Worthy of Being Encouraged in Our American Colonies, for the Purposes of Medicine, Agriculture, and Commerce. To Which Is Added, the Figure and Botanical Description of a New Sensitive Plant, Called Dionaea Muscipula: Or, Venus’s Fly-Trap. London : Printed and sold by L. Davis, printer to the Royal Society, opposite Gray’s-Inn, Holborn, 1770. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.108658

Hooker, Joseph Dalton. Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Vol. 44. London, 1875.https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/94451

Juniper, B. E. The Carnivorous Plants. London ; San Diego: Academic Press, 1989.

Moore, Thomas. Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems. James Carpenter, 1806.

Price, Cheryl Blake. “VEGETABLE MONSTERS: MAN-EATING TREES IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE FICTION.” Victorian Literature and Culture 41, no. 2 (June 2013): 311–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150312000411

Prior, Sophia. Carnivorous Plants and “the Man Eating Tree.” Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1939. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/25206

Recommended Sites

Darwin Correspondence Project

IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species

International Carnivorous Plants Society (ICPS)

Plant Humanities Initiative

Wikipedia. “Carnivorous Plant.”

April 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Organizations around the world have commemorated the occasion by participating in the global Earth Optimism movement — an initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian to “turn the conservation conversation from doom and gloom to optimism and opportunity”.

Throughout 2020, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and our partners are joining the movement by sharing conservation success stories from and made possible by the BHL collection. Follow our blog for conservation stories — past and present — and visit our website for more information and to explore our Earth Optimism book collection.

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Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a man who believed all of nature was interconnected, and that by affecting one aspect of nature, other parts of nature would be affected, too—for good or ill. Humboldt believed that one’s own emotions and subjective views were necessary in order to completely experience nature. Simply taking measurements or classifying animals, plants, rocks and other forms of life would never allow one to fully experience the truth of nature.

Born to an aristocratic Prussian family in 1769, Humboldt grew up during the Age of Enlightenment, which emphasized intense observation paired with scientific information as the primary sources of knowledge. However, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which outlined the interplay of inner subjectivity and knowledge of external things, greatly influenced Humboldt’s view of nature as he grew older. According to Kant, when you look at a rock, for example, you are influenced by your own subjective beliefs. Thus, you cannot truly see the rock as a rock-in-itself, as you will always see the external world through a filter of internal senses and emotions. Humboldt likewise claimed that the external world only existed as we perceived it “within ourselves” (Humboldt in Wulf, p. 40).

Humboldt became the scientist of the Romantics, who believed man was unified with nature and that nature could only be comprehended by inward feelings. Poetry, art, and emotions were viewed as the perfect vehicles through which to share one’s experience of nature. Humboldt’s infusion of emotion and prose into his observations of the natural world can be seen in one of his earlier works, Views of Nature. With this book, Humboldt created a new genre of nature writing, which was both pleasurable to read and filled with facts. He made sure that this work was poetic enough to inspire emotional fulfillment and a love of nature in the layperson while also appealing to scientists through the inclusion of annotations with scientific facts and measurements at the end of every chapter.

After receiving a rather large inheritance following his mother’s death in 1796, Humboldt’s scientific pursuits became more determined and ambitious. He decided to attempt a research expedition, and in 1799, asked permission of King Carlos IV of Spain to explore the Spanish colonies in South America and the Philippines. While he was granted a Spanish passport by the king, Humboldt had to fund the trip himself and send the king plants and animals for the royal cabinet and garden.

It was very rare for a foreigner to be allowed into the Spanish territories, and Humboldt made the most of his travels, bringing many scientific instruments with which to make observations and take measurements. He spent five years exploring different areas in South America. He compared the environments to those in different parts of Europe, noting that similar plants existed in similar climates.

Humboldt’s time in Cumana, the capital of New Andalusia (an area now part of Venezuela), had a particularly profound impact on his personal and scientific views. His observations of the treatment of enslaved people in the slave market near his lodgings impelled Humboldt to become an avid abolitionist for the rest of his life. It was also in Cumana that Humboldt saw how colonialism destroyed native ecosystems, as colonists had felled so many trees that the land became dry and farming yielded less crops.

While visiting Lake Valencia, Humboldt first recorded his observation that humans could induce climate change and destroy ecosystems. He noted that when forests are destroyed, springs and riverbeds dry up, the forest floor—no longer protected by tree foliage—becomes oversaturated with rain and soil is loosened, and different types of plants and animal life die. Humboldt observed that all aspects of nature are interconnected— when one part of a natural environment is drastically altered, such as with deforestation, the rest of that environment will be impacted in various drastic ways as a result. Humboldt gave many written warnings about the importance of understanding the many reciprocal interactions in nature in order to prevent the devastation of ecosystems and biodiversity caused by humans’ interference with nature.

Climbing the Chimborazo volcano in what is now Ecuador was one of the most exciting events for Humboldt in South America. By pushing through altitude sickness, desertion by his porters at 15,600 feet, narrow and dangerous pathways that required crawling, and increasingly falling temperatures, Humboldt eventually made it to 19,413 feet—marking the first documented time that anyone had ever reached that height.

It was here that Humboldt came up with a name and a visual for his theory that all of nature was connected—not just as a living entity, but as a composite of ecosystems all over the world at different locations containing similar flora and fauna at similar geological heights and climates. The different vegetation zones of the volcano reminded Humboldt of the different vegetation zones in the wider world, going from hotter equatorial zones to colder polar zones, just as one went from the warmer base of the mountain toward its freezing summit.

Humboldt depicted his “Naturgemälde”, which in German means “painting of nature” but also “unification”, through a visualization published within Essai sur la géographie des plantes (1805). This illustration, with the unique name he gave it, showed Chimborazo as a cross-section in which different plants grew at different altitudes and temperatures. Next to the illustration was information about other mountains around the world and a description of how their plant and climate zones could be compared to those on Chimborazo at similar heights. The idea that one could visually illustrate and describe plant life based on climate and location was a completely unprecedented idea at the time, and one which still influences our scientific views today.

In 1827 in Berlin, Humboldt gave many lectures on his observations of the natural world during his travels. Humboldt’s ability to find an interconnection between the smallest bit of moss to the tallest mountain and beyond to the heavens captivated people, as did his observations on connections between similar climates, plants and animals in different geographic locations. Listeners were dazzled by this new way of thinking and lecturing in which Humboldt connected, and made meaning out of, so many seemingly disparate ideas.

Humboldt had only one other trip to a distant land in his life. Invited by Tsar Nicholas I to gather research on platinum, which had been found in the Ural Mountains, he traveled to Russia in 1829, hoping to gather more information on different climates and plant life. While disappointed by the trip and its focus on finding platinum as a source of possible Russian currency, Humboldt nevertheless returned to Berlin filled with ideas for his next, and most popular, work—a multi-volume opus called Cosmos (Kosmos in German).

Cosmos was an embodiment of Humboldt’s ideas on the interconnectedness of nature and being. It discussed celestial matters, earthly matters, and the inner, organic life of plants, animals and humans. Humboldt enlisted the help of experts in varying fields, including classicists and historians, once again unifying seemingly separate fields by creating a work connecting ideas from these fields to one another and to science.

In 1845, the first volume of Cosmos was published in Germany. It was an instant success and was translated into various other languages. The introduction explained Humboldt’s view that all of nature was connected and formed a living whole. Humboldt was the first to describe the climate as an interaction between landmasses, the oceans and the atmosphere. He described a breath of life that came from the earth—not from divinity—and was intrinsic in all living things. Humboldt became one of the most celebrated scientists in the world after the distribution of this work not only throughout Europe, but in America as well.

Even though Humboldt expressed many dire warnings about human-induced climate change, his belief that nature was a unified whole meant that if destroying one part of an ecosystem destroyed the rest of it, then rebuilding different parts of an ecosystem could aid in its complete restoration. He encouraged everyone to experience nature by immersing themselves within it, by taking walks and going outdoors. Humboldt also believed in sharing scientific information, both within scientific circles and across other disciplines. By using this method of information sharing, we have a chance, as a world community—as a part of that living organism called “nature”—to combat climate change, to counter humans’ negative impact on nature, and to rebuild and restore different habitats and the biodiversity contained within them.

Humboldt at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

You can learn more about Humboldt’s legacy and his impact on American perceptions of nature and the environment through the exhibit Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM).

As the SAAM website articulates, “This exhibition will be the first to examine Humboldt’s impact on five spheres of American cultural development: the visual arts, sciences, literature, politics, and exploration, between 1804 and 1903. It centers on the fine arts as a lens through which to understand how deeply intertwined Humboldt’s ideas were with America’s emerging identity. The exhibition includes more than 100 paintings, sculptures, maps, and artifacts as well as a video introduction to Humboldt and his connections to the Smithsonian through an array of current projects and initiatives.”

The exhibit is on display from 18 September 2020 – 3 January 2021. Learn more.

Interesting Facts

Humboldt had an intense fear of ghosts, and especially feared the ghost of his mother after she died. It was rumored that he participated in several seances after her death in hopes of contacting her.

In 1804, Thomas Jefferson, then-President of the United States, invited Humboldt to the capital to discuss Humboldt’s scientific findings in the Spanish colonies. Humboldt even let Jefferson have a sizable number of pages of his research to translate, not knowing that Jefferson considered all of this information to be valuable intelligence about the Spanish territories that bordered Jefferson’s recently acquired Louisiana Purchase.

Charles Darwin, who determined that all animals evolve through natural selection, was a huge admirer of Humboldt and kept a copy of Humboldt’s Views of Nature onboard the Beagle as he sailed around the world observing animal and plant life. Humboldt did not get involved in the debate over how certain plants and animals seemed to be present only in some climates and geographies but not always in other similar ones, writing that his study of plants and animals was not about “the investigation of the origin of beings” (Wulf, p. 275)—a phrase which Darwin underlined. Darwin took up the challenge in his Origin of the Species (1859).

Humboldt called black coffee “concentrated sunshine” (Wulf, p. 283).

References

Berg, A., & Humboldt, A. (1854). Physiognomy of tropical vegetation in South America; a series of views illustrating the primeval forests on the river Magdalena, and in the Andes of New Grenada. London: Paul and Dominic Colnaghi and Co., Publishers to Her Majesty. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.119819

Bonpland, A., & Humboldt, A. (1805). Essai sur la géographie des plantes: Accompagné d’un tableau physique des régions équinoxiales, fondé sur des mesures exécutées, depuis le dixième degré de latitude boréale jusqu’au dixième degré de latitude australe, pendant les années 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802 et 1803. Paris: Levrault, Schoell et Compagnie, Libraires. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.9309

Bonpland, A., & Humboldt, A. (1833). Monographie des melastomacées, comprenant toutes les plantes de cet ordre récueillies jusqu’à ce jour, et notamment au Mèxique, dans l’Ile de Cuba, dans les provinces de Caracas, de Cumana, et de Barcèlone, aux Andes de la Nouvelle-Grenade, de Quito et du Pérou, et sur les bords du Rio-Negro, de l’Orénoque et de la rivière des Amazones. London: Gide. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.162868

Bonpland, A. & Humboldt, A. (1826). Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804, by Alexander de Humboldt, and Aimé Bonpland. Vol. 6. (H.M. Williams, Trans.). London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.87622

Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.68064

Humboldt, A. (1849). Aspects of nature, in different lands and climates; with scientific elucidations. Vol. 1. (E.J. Sabine, Trans). London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.151955

Humboldt, A. (1871). Cosmos: A sketch of a physical description of the universe. Vol. 3. (E.C. Otté, Trans.). London: Bell & Daldy. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.27525

Humboldt, A. (1893). Cosmos: A sketch of a physical description of the universe. Vol. 1. (E.C. Otté, Trans.). London: George Bell & Sons. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.29831

Humboldt, A. (1849). Cosmos: Sketch of a physical description of the universe. Vol. 2. (E. Sabine & E. Sabine, Trans.). London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.29892

Humboldt, A. (1850). Views of nature, or, Contemplations on the sublime phenomena of creation: With scientific illustrations. (E.C. Otté, & H.G. Bohn, Trans.). London: Henry G. Bohn. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.4802

Magee, J. (2019). Alexander von Humboldt: A vision of the unity of Nature. In R. Huxley (Ed.), The Great Naturalists, (n.p., Kindle edition). London: Thames & Hudson.

Meinhardt, M. (2019). Alexander von Humboldt: How the most famous scientist of the Romantic Age found the soul of nature. Katonah, N.Y.: BlueBridge.

Wulf, A. (2015). The invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s new world. New York: Vintage Books.

Charles Darwin is a household name. One of the most famous naturalists to ever live, he is known around the world for his publication On the Origin of Species and contributions to evolutionary theory.

The work of contemporary scientists informed the development of Darwin’s evolutionary concepts. By applying, and sometimes countering, the theories of others, he constructed one of our most important scientific foundations. He documented this intellectual progression in the margins of the books in his library. This historically significant collection is available online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Charles Darwin’s Library is a digital edition and virtual reconstruction of the surviving books owned by Charles Darwin. Produced as a collaboration between BHL, Cambridge University Library, the Library & Archives of the Natural History Museum in London, and the Darwin Manuscripts Project, the collection draws on original copies and surrogates from other libraries and includes over 500 of the 1,480 books in Darwin’s library. Notably, these books are complemented with fully-indexed transcriptions of Darwin’s annotations.

Charles Darwin’s Library is particularly meaningful to Dr. B. Ricardo Brown, Professor of Social Science and Cultural Studies at the Pratt Institute. Brown has devoted years of research to Darwin and the impact of his evolutionary theories on debates around monogenetic vs. polygenetic human origins. Brown’s 2010 book, Until Darwin: Science, Human Variety and the Origin of Race, explores the complex web of factors that influenced these debates from the 17th-19th centuries and the impact of the publication of On the Origin of Species on this scientific discourse.

Brown spent nearly 10 years researching this book. Today, BHL’s open access collections offer researchers considerable time-savings.

“I am sure that if I had the kind of access to texts that BHL now provides researchers, I could have reduced the research time for Until Darwin in half,” muses Brown.

With academic backgrounds in environmental studies, sociology, and critical theory, Brown’s research explores the history of science, investigating the relationship between society and nature and the “genealogies of systems of knowledge” through which we make sense of these relationships. His current project looks at sociology and ecology as “sciences of life” whose formation was made possible by the dissolution — marked by Darwin’s Origin — of political economy and natural history.

“Without BHL, such a project would be much more limited, if not impossible,” affirms Brown. “The Library’s impact has been immense.”

Brown refers to BHL at least several times a week. A great benefit of the Library is that it has facilitated unexpected discoveries that expand the scope of relevant literature for his research projects.

“BHL makes it possible to browse through the library and (virtually) pick-up an unfamiliar work or author and discover something that is relevant or just interesting — which you might not have come across without BHL,” explains Brown. “There is much to be said for the pleasures of simply exploring the archive.”

Beyond serving as a vast archive of texts, artifacts, and scientific ideologies, BHL also facilitates Brown’s interest in ecology and environmental studies by allowing him to compare his own field observations to those of past naturalists.

“I found that it is quite useful to do some field observations and hikes when immersed in the study of Darwin and the Natural History of his time,” says Brown. “One gets a better insight into Darwin’s methodology, which depended on his own observations and those of trusted naturalists and correspondents.”

Take, for example, Darwin’s observations on slave-making ants.

“Darwin constantly tacks back and forth between his own observations and those of the recognized authority on the slave-making ‘instinct’ in ants, Pierre Huber,” explains Brown. “This series of observations led Darwin to conclude that the ‘instinct for slavery’, in ants as well as human societies, was in no way ‘miraculous’ or evidence of a fixed or natural hierarchy.”

Brown also finds BHL to be a useful educational resource for his courses.

“BHL provides a means for students in my courses to access and download PDFs of texts that only a few years ago would have been known to them only through secondhand descriptions, summaries….or long lectures,” affirms Brown. “ As Pratt is primarily a school of art, design, and architecture, students appreciate the aesthetic skills of early naturalists that they experience through BHL’s high resolution images. Works such as Cuvier’s Tableau élémentaire de l’histoire naturelle des animaux or Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur provide a wonderful avenue for understanding the social relations of art, aesthetics, and science.“

With much of his research focused on the investigation of science and society’s influence on each other, he’d love to see BHL incorporate functionality allowing readers to explore the social and cultural contexts of the texts in the Library.

“By its inclusion in the collection, each text potentially takes on a certain legitimacy,” considers Brown. “This means that texts such as Morton’s Crania Americana or Pouchet’s The Plurality of the Human Race might, despite or perhaps even because of their age, be misread as somehow giving voice to views that remain contested. And because much of the history of science is the history of errors, this issue takes on a particular importance when authoritarian movements are constantly seeking to co-opt a wide variety of knowledges — for example, Classical and Medieval Studies, Darwinism, Ecology and Environmental Studies — to the service of supremacy.”

As we explore opportunities to link our content with other resources, collections, and databases in future iterations of BHL, including through linked data applications, strategies to provide this context will hopefully become increasingly feasible.

While many aspects of BHL’s collections and services have been important to Brown’s research, his favorite feature of the Library is that it is free and open to the public.

“BHL makes the history of science available to everyone,” praises Brown. “It would seem to have significant potential to enrich citizen science projects, as well as public discourse on climate change, extinction, the authority of science, the domination of Nature, and much more.”

We’re proud to know that, by making our collections globally accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, BHL is helping to advance a wide range of research and inspire discovery of the natural world.