In 1831, Charles Robert Darwin set off for South America, aboard the Beagle as captain’s companion. At the time of departure, both he and his family expected that on his return he would be a parson in a country village. Although he did not become an evolutionist on The Beagle ­ that had to wait until his return to England and the analysis of his specimens ­ by the end of the voyage it was clear that he was not going to become a clergyman. Instead, he had become an accomplished naturalist and geologist. His letters from his voyage, and the specimens he sent back in advance of his return, made him famous long before The Beagle returned to England.
On his return, Darwin gave some of the birds he had collected from the Galapagos Islands to the ornithologist John Gould. In March of 1837, Gould and Darwin met. Gould told him that not only were the mocking birds from the Galapagos unknown species, but that the birds from each island were different from each other. He said the same of the Galapagos finches ­ although he was less sure because Darwin had not labelled the specimens properly. Several other observations also proved puzzling to Darwin, for example, the distribution of armadillo-like fossils in South America and the discovery that the continent contained two different species of Rhea. And in the July of that year Darwin started his first notebook on 'Transmutation of Species'.
