This is a first edition. Today, Darwin has achieved an almost mythic status. Original copies of The Origin of Species are handled with extreme reverence, whilst specimens he collected are treated almost as relics. Sometimes, however, something collected by Darwin achieves a status beyond what it deserves as zoology curators found when the story of one of his bird collections was pieced together. These are Darwin's finches. They were collected on his great five-year voyage of discovery on The Beagle in the 1830s. They're often cited as the spark for Darwin's big idea, his theory of evolution. Variations in the finches' beak shape and size demonstrate how they'd evolved to take advantage of food available in their particular habitat.


这是首版《物种起源》。如今，达尔文几乎成了神话般的人物。人们怀着敬畏的心情翻阅着《物种起源》的原本，而他收集的标本也被视为古迹。然而，当动物馆主管们从达尔文的某套鸟类藏品中拼凑出事情原委时，发现他的某些藏品是难副盛名的。 19世纪30年代，达尔文乘贝格尔号舰展开了五年的探索之旅，途中收藏了这些雀科标本。人们一直以为，是它们给了达尔文灵感构思出了他的进化论。雀科鸟喙形状和大小的差别揭示了它们为适应各栖息地的食物特点的进化过程。