Darwin’s notes and notebooks
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Darwin's numbered list of bird specimens, including a steamer duck now in the University Museum of Zoology Cambridge. |
Whenever he was on shore Darwin kept a small pocket notebook handy to write down rough observations as he made them. As the voyage progressed, these observations were written up as separate, fuller notes on geology and zoology, keyed to particular specimens by number; Darwin used these notes extensively in his later publications. Eighteen of the pocket notebooks survive in the collection at Down House in Kent, where Darwin lived and worked from 1842 until his death in 1882, and which has now been preserved as a memorial to him. Darwin's specimen lists and notes are in Cambridge University Library.