from so simple a beginning

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, 

clothed with many plants of many kinds, 

with birds singing on the bushes,

 insects flitting about and worms crawling

 through the damp earth, 

and to reflect that these forms, so different

 yet so dependent on each other in so complex a manner,

 have all been produced by simple laws.There is grandeur in this

 view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed

 by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, 

whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity,

 from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful 

and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.





Charles Darwin

from On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

 

 

 

Beagle Diary, February 29th 1832

...

The day has passed delightfully: delight is however a weak term for such transports of pleasure: I have been wandering by myself in a Brazilian forest: amongst the multitude it is hard to say what set of objects is most striking; the general luxuriance of the vegetation bears the victory, the elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers. ...the glossy green of the foliage, all tend to this end. ... A most paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady parts of the wood, ... the noise from the insects is so loud that in the evening it can be heard even in a vessel anchored several hundred yards from the shore. ... Yet within the recesses of the forest when in the midst of it a universal stillness appears to reign. ... To a person fond of natural history such a day as this brings with it pleasure more acute than he ever may again experience.

...

~ Charles Darwin

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