On a sunny day in October 1835, a 26-year-old Charles Darwin hiked from the parched coast of Santiago Island in the Gal\u00e1pagos archipelago to the island\u2019s green, damp highlands. After a long walk, he sat in the shade and watched the island\u2019s giant tortoises as they ambled along broad roads that had been trodden by their elephant-like feet over countless generations. He timed their gait, measured their carapaces and tried to lift them. Finding he could not, he climbed on their backs as they trudged along. The acting vice-governor, a Norwegian mercenary named Nicholas Lawson, remarked to Darwin that he could \u2018with certainty tell from which island any [tortoise] was brought\u2019. On small, dry islands, the tortoises were smaller. On larger, higher islands like Floreana and Santiago, where volcanic calderas are often enshrouded in misty clouds, the tortoises were much larger when full grown and their carapaces were dome-shaped. While in the Gal\u00e1pagos, Darwin failed to see the importance of what Lawson had said: \u2018I did not for some time pay sufficient attention to this statement\u2019, Darwin lamented back in England years later when he began considering the evolutionary significance of the giant tortoises and other Gal\u00e1pagos animals. When Darwin was in the Gal\u00e1pagos, he was not yet thinking about evolution. Although he made notes about the tortoises\u2019 behaviour, gait, hearing and size, he did not make collections of the animals, as he did with island birds, plants, rocks, lizards and insects. Instead, he ate them.<\/p>\n
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