Collecting Evolution: The Galapagos Expedition that Vindicated Darwin

James, chair of the geology department at Sonoma State University, convincingly shows that though Darwin’s 1835 Galapagos visit remains a historical milestone, the specimens he collected were scattershot and poorly labeled, and that later research voyages produced better evidence. The greatest of these, James argues, was the 1905–1906 expedition sponsored by the museum of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Darwin visited four islands over the course of five weeks; in 1906 eight young scientists and three crewmen stayed for over a year, visited 13 islands, and collected 78,000 specimens (including 266 giant tortoises). Readers will blanch at this mass slaughter, which included creatures near to extinction, but James emphasizes repeatedly that they operated in a “pre-conservation world.” Naturalists in 1905 believed that if they didn’t bring back a rare creature, it would be “lost to science forever.” The immense collection revived the museum, which had been destroyed by the great 1906 earthquake, and provided material that corroborated Darwin’s work. This dense, scholarly work offers a nearly day-by-day account of a few months of collecting, so many readers may want to skip to the final chapters. Still, James writes well and delivers a stimulating account of evolutionary thought through the years. (Apr.)