| Actually, it was visiting the Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in June 2006 that inspired me to write a picture book about Darwin’s family life. (It’s not the same as seeing a Galapagos turtle in person, but you can still access the exhibit online at http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/)
As I turned a corner of the exhibit and came upon the recreation of Darwin’s study at Down House, I stopped short, transported into the epicenter of Darwin’s creative life.
This is where he wrote and worked, I thought. Here was a desk crowded with papers, pens, and a microscope. And there was his comfy old armchair near the hearth, where he wrote using a cloth-covered board set across the arms. There were shelves crowded with notes for the Origin of Species. And, of course, a bed by the fire for his dog, Polly.
One could almost imagine Darwin here. But it wouldn’t have been Down House without something else -- the clatter of children’s feet and the noisy, happy racket of young voices.
Charles and Emma Darwin had ten children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. And while Darwin never traveled far after returning from his legendary voyage, biographer Janet Browne describes Down House itself as a kind of Beagle, “a self-contained, self-regulating scientific ship.”
While Emma ran things efficiently, Darwin could work in his “cabin” – his study. The children and Darwin’s numerous, far-flung correspondents became a kind of crew, ready to help with a wide variety of natural history experiments from flowers to pigeons, from worms to bees.
Bees were a favorite Darwin subject, and Darwin’s articles on bees are still cited today. In Voyaging, Browne writes that watching her husband bending over a flower, “Emma got the feeling that Darwin would have liked to be a bee above all other species.”
I was fortunate when working The Humblebee Hunter to have the guidance of talented editor, Tamson Weston at Hyperion, who paired the manuscript with gorgeous illustrations by artist Jen Corace that capture the love and warmth of the Darwin family at Down House. The story begins this way:
One summer afternoon, Mother and Cook tried to teach me to bake a honey cake.
But raspberries glistened in the sun, and birds brushed the air with song.
More than anything, I wanted to be outside.
Then, out the window, I saw Father, home from walking on his Thinking Path.
He stopped in the kitchen garden and bent over the beans. He wanted to study the bees.
Mother smiled and brushed a speck of flower from my cheek.
“Henrietta, I think your father would become a bee, if he could. Just like them, he’s always busy.”
While we have descriptions of at least one bee experiment Darwin did with his children, I can’t be sure the experiment described in the fictional The Humblebee Hunter -- counting the number of flowers a humblebee visits in a minute -- is one that Darwin and his children did together.
But in a letter written to the British horticultural periodical, “The Gardener’s Chronicle” on August 16, 1841, Darwin describes the number of flowers he saw a humblebee (bumblebee) suck in one minute.
Like Darwin, I did research, involving my family on summer days, bending over flowers to watch bees at work. (My results were pretty close to Darwin’s but not always exact.)
So, any idea as to the number of blossoms a bumblebee visits in one minute?
You may have to wait for summer to experiment yourself.
In the meantime, here’s a hint: it’s not five thousand.
(And if you really want to know Darwin’s count, of course you should do research. The answer appears in Letter 607 in the Darwin Correspondence Project at http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-607) |
