Friday, March 29, 2013

Understanding Darwin.................

His first serious collection was of beetles, and "to give a proof of my zeal," he one day "saw two rare beetles & seized one in each hand; then I saw a third & new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one I held in my right hand into my mouth.  Alas it ejected some intensely acrid fluid which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost."
-as excerpted from Paul Johnson's Darwin:  Portrait of a Genius

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