The Contributions of Sir John Lubbock, F. R. S. To The Origin of Species Some annotations to Darwin

Abstract

Wealthy, titled, and strikingly handsome, the London banker, Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury, came near being the Leonardo of Victorian England. As a Liberal in Parliament for over two score years, he is perhaps chiefly remembered as the author of the Bank Holiday (St Lubbock’s Day). As a scientist his work in biology, geology, and anthropology brought him the respect and friendship of Darwin, Lyell, and Huxley. In the course of a long life he lectured and wrote on everything from echinoderms to bankruptcy, totemism to the protection of foreign bondholders, the habits of Hymenoptera to the problems of municipal sanitation and world peace, (1) For him, as for the age, life still retained its wholeness: science was not the private concern of specialists, and business was not divorced from wider humanistic concerns. Lubbock was an early associate of Darwin and contributed in several ways to the development of the Origin of Species . Their acquaintance dated from the time of Darwin’s first arrival at the village of Down in 1842. High Elms, the Lubbock estate, was only about a mile away and young Lubbock, then eight years old, soon became a favourite with Darwin, who took him on walks and generally made a protege of him.