Darwin's Garden

Down House and The Origin of Species

By Boulter, Michael Charles

Publishers Summary:
Five years after returning from his trip around the world, young Charles Darwin became the owner of Down House in Kent, England, where he moved his growing family, far away from the turmoil and distractions of London. He would live there for the rest of his life, and it would become the place where he began work on his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species.For almost twenty years, he used the garden around him as a laboratory. In the orchard, he conducted experiments on pollination. He built a dovecote where breeding new strains of pigeons helped him understand the intricacies of generation. On his daily walk along the sandbank, he observed how plants competed for survival. In solitude he struggled with the ideas of evolution that had haunted him since his voyage, which, in turn, gave him the courage to publish his revolutionary ideas.Bringing Darwin’s garden to the present day, Boulter unfolds a shining portrait of the formation of one of England’s greatest thinkers and his relationship with the place he loved, and shows how his experiments—conducted more than 150 years ago—are still revealing new proofs as we continue to search for the origins of life.

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ISBN
978-1-58243-471-1
Publisher
Counterpoint


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on January 26, 2009

Though Darwin biographers note the importance of Down House, the quiet Kent estate where Darwin did his heaviest thinking and writing, his greenhouse and gardening experiments are usually dismissed as scientist's play, distractions from his real work. Author and British National History Museum paleobiologist Boulter (Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man) brings the garden front and center to demonstrate Darwin's patient em...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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