Darwin and Evolution for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities

Darwin and Evolution for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities — page 7
were London's grimy streets polluted air and bustling crowds He needed to take a break to clear his head So in 1838 he started reading a few books for fun what ever interesting titles caught his eye Anything to get his mind off the boxes of specimens and scribbled notes stacked up all around his room On that evening in late October while relaxing in his study he picked up a copy of a book called Essay on the Princi ple of Population which had been written 40 years earlier but which was still a bestseller The author was a minister named Thomas Malthus who had tried to figure out why there were always so many poor people in England Even though the book wasn't as entertaining as an adventure story or a romance novel Darwin was glad to be reading something that had nothing whatsoever to do with his own work on plants and animals Or so he thought It turns out Darwin couldn't have been more mistaken During his worldwide voyage Darwin had learned what other scientists already knew that there were many more kinds of animals in the world than people in the past had ever imagined In ancient times when the story of Noah's Ark was written people thought that there were at most a hundred different kinds of animals dogs cats cows lions mice sheep foxes hawks sparrows beetles deer monkeys and so on quite a variety but few enough that Noah could easily fit them all into his ark But by Darwin's time in the mid 1800s explorers had discovered thousands and thou sands of different kinds of animals and every year hundreds more were being added to the list As Darwin looked over his specimens he often wondered Had each species appeared fully formed separate from every other species Or were they somehow all related to each other What espe cially intrigued Darwin was how certain species were very