CHARLES
A hundred years ago people believed
that plants and animals had always been as they are now. They thought that all the different sorts of living things, including
men and women, were put in this
world by some mysterious power a few thou-
sand years ago.
It was Charles Darwin, born at
Shrewsbury on the 12th of February, 1809, who showed that this was just a
legend. As a boy Darwin loved to walk in the countryside, collecting in sects, flowers and minerals. He liked to watch his
elder brother making chemical experiments. These hobbies interested him much more than Greek and Latin, which were his
main subjects at school.
His father, a doctor, sent Charles to Edinburgh
University to study medicine. But Charles did not like this. He spent a lot of
time with a zoologist friend, watching birds and other аni-mals, and
collecting insects in the countryside.
His father, a doctor, sent Charles to Edinburgh University
to study medicine. But Charles did not like this. He spent a lot of time with a
zoologist friend, watching birds and other animals, and collecting insects
in the countryside.
Then his father sent him to Cambridge to
be trained as a parson. But Darwin didn't want to be a doctor or a parson. He
wanted to be a biologist.
In 1831 he set sail in the Beagle for
South America to make maps of the coastline there. Darwin went in the ship to
see the animals and plants of other lands. On his voyage round the world he
looked carefully at thousands of living things in the sea and on land and came
to very important conclusions.
This is what he came to believe. Once there were only
simple jelly-like creatures living in the sea. Very slowly, taking hundreds
millions of years, these have developed to produce all the different kinds of
animals and plants we know today. But Darwin waited over twenty years
before he let the world know his great ideas.. During that time he was
carefully collecting more information. It showed how right he was that all
living things had developed from simpler creatures.
He wrote a famous book 'The Origin of Species'.
People who knew nothing about living things
tried to make fun of Darwin's ideas.
The development of science has shown
that Darwin's idea of evolution was correct.