Instead they carry his name and address on the inside covers in case he lost them. There is no evidence that the notebooks or their contents were 'secret' as sometimes claimed. By 1840 the notebooks were largely finished. Pages 134- 135 of Notebook D record his famous reading of Malthus in September 1838 which crystallized the notion of natural selection. The lines with a crossed end are existing species or lineages and those without represent extinct species. The most ancient forms are at the bottom and their descendants branch off irregularly. These notebooks reveal in detail his research and gradual illumination of species questions - where do species come from? How are they related and how do they become adapted? The famous sketch on the right is from Darwin's Notebook B and depicts the branching system of descent with modification which he realized could explain the relationship between different species in the same class or family. (The inventor William Henry Fox Talbot also titled his notebooks in the same way.) Darwin had already become convinced of transmutation, or evolution, before opening the new notebooks. 1 Darwin simply lettered their covers A, B, C, D etc. His note taking continued in his old Edinburgh notebook and his St Helena Model notebook before opening a new series of notebooks for theoretical work, termed notebooks on geology, transmutation of species and metaphysical enquiries by the editors of the definitive edition. Shortly after the end of the voyage he began to use one of them, the Red notebook, for theoretical speculations, especially on geology and the formation of coral reefs. Darwin's notebooks and reading lists An introduction by John van Wyheĭuring the voyage of the Beagle Darwin recorded his observations in field notebooks.
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