纪念达尔文

如果您喜欢我们的内容，请点击上方蓝色的“商务印书馆英语编辑室”关注我们。每周至少两次精彩内容，第一时间呈现给您！欢迎留言和转发！

1882年4月19日，伟大的生物学家达尔文与世长辞。由于他一生对生物科学做出了划时代的贡献，人们将他葬在伦敦的威斯敏斯特大教堂。今天就为大家分享一段他的故事。

Charles Darwin

1809–1882

the man who changed people's ideas with his 

theory of evolution

识别二维码，听达尔文讲述他的故事

I met Captain FitzRoy, and was very excited when he invited me to go on the expedition. But at first my father refused to let me go. He said that it was a waste of time, and that he wouldn't pay for me. Fortunately, my uncle talked to my father and persuaded him to let me go. After some delay, HMS Beagle left England on 27th December 1831. I didn’t know that it would be five long years before I saw my home and family again!

HMS Beagle

I lived in a small cabin – a room on the ship – and I wasn't a good sailor, so I was often seasick. But when I was able to go on land, I collected wonderful specimens of birds, animals, plants and fossils. I wrote notes about everything I found, and I sent my specimens to John Henslow in Cambridge so that he could study them.

seasick adj. 晕船的

fossil n. 化石

We sailed to Brazil, where I loved the rainforests, but I was shocked by the terrible system of slavery. We then went south to Patagonia, and stayed for weeks in places where no white person had been before. In 1833, we reached the Falkland Islands, where I found wonderful new animals and plants. We continued our voyage, sailing around Tierra del Fuego at the southern end of South America.

slavery n. 奴隶制

My 25th birthday was on 12th February 1834, and as a birthday present, Captain FitzRoy gave my name to a mountain in Tierra Del Fuego – Mount Darwin. We continued sailing up the coast of Chile, but in August 1834, I became dangerously ill with a fever. After a long time I got better, so we sailed up the coast to Peru and arrived at the Galapagos Islands in September 1835. These islands were wonderful places for learning new things about natural history.

There were no people on the Galapagos Islands, only thousands of animals and birds. As I was studying the wildlife there, I noticed something very interesting. The same species of small bird was living on several of the islands, but on each island, the birds were a little different from each other. And although we’d found the same species of bird on the mainland of South America, those birds were different from the birds on the Galapagos Islands.

In addition, I noticed that there were different kinds of tortoises on the different islands. I realized something very important. Species of animals and birds could adapt themselves to different environments. In other words, a species could change in order to fit better into an environment.

tortoise n. 乌龟

We stayed on the Galapagos Islands for a month, then, in October 1835, we sailed across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in New Zealand in December. From there we went to Sydney in Australia. From Sydney I travelled west to the town of Bathurst and discovered more plants and animals. We continued on to South Africa, stopping at the Cocos Islands and Mauritius on the way. But we'd been travelling for over four years, and we were ready to go home. We finally arrived back in Falmouth, in south-west England, on 2nd October 1836, after a voyage of four years, nine months and five days.

The voyage of HMS Beagle

This was that species of animals and birds change very slowly over hundreds of thousands of years. During this process of slow change, or evolution, only the strongest animals and birds survive. This is because only the strongest ones are able to adapt to new environments. I called this process ‘natural selection’. But at first, I didn't want to tell anyone about my idea, because I knew that many people would be angry with me.

以上内容摘自“柯林斯名人故事集”第三级中的《了不起的科学家》。

正文部分用简明清晰的英文讲述人物生平故事，并以脚注形式提供重点词汇解释，文后附该著名人物生平大事记。

书后附英文词汇表，提供重点词汇的英语释义。全书英文原音朗读，提供点读和二维码音频播放功能。

识别二维码 一键购买☟

延伸阅读

商务印书馆英语编辑室

微信号：CP-English

点击“阅读原文”购买本书

长按二维码关注