Abstract
In this journal I recently published (Sulloway 1982) a systematic table of certain spelling errors that are present in Charles Darwin's Beagle voyage manuscripts (1832-1836). My primary purpose in publishing this table was to provide a means of dating Darwin's Ornithological Notes (1963 [18361). Long the subject of conjecture and debate, the dating of these notes, which contain Darwin's first tentative speculations about the possible transmutation of species, has ranged from as early as 1835 to as late as 1838. By monitoring Darwin's spelling habits during the Beagle voyage, I was able to contribute evidence bearing on this historiographic problem. More specifically, just as the geologist can use certain fossilized forms to recognize and date strata of different geological ages, so the historian can use various spelling changes in Darwin's voyage manuscripts to provide analogous identifying "markers" for certain distinct spans of time during the Beagle voyage. By recording dated usages of the words occasion, coral, and Pacific (and their variant spellings occassion, corall, and Pacifick), I found it possible to divide the Beagle voyage into seven distinct spelling phases and, as a result, to show that Darwin's famous Ornithological Notes drafted during the fifth of these seven phases were written between late November 1835 and mid-August 1836. Further manuscript evidence, namely, comparison of Darwin's Ornithological Notes with eleven other similar specimen catalogues written on identical paper, allowed me to date the Ornithological Notes even more precisely to within a thirty-one-day period (June 18 to July 19, 1836). When I originally published my table of Darwin's voyage spelling habits, I hoped that it might also prove useful to fellow Darwin scholars in dating other previously undatable voyage manuscripts. Since its publication, the table has indeed been put to further use.' In the process, the need has arisen for certain minor corrections, as well as
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