NETWATCH: Delving Into Darwin

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

With everything from his field notebooks to his college admission notice already on the Web, you might think there aren't many Darwin-related documents left to post. But last week, another 20,000 items—previously available only to scholars—were poured onto the Internet by The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, hosted by the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

Included in the new stash are background information for his writings, book drafts, and a collection of contemporary caricatures (above). There's also a manuscript of the 1842 essay that first lays out Darwin's evolutionary theory, allowing readers to compare the never-published original with the posthumously released version transcribed and edited by his son Francis. Another item undercuts the standard image of a fearful Darwin concealing his heretical thinking. He originally floated the possibility that species change not in some secret notebook but in a synopsis of his bird collections, “a document intended for somebody else” to read, says the site's curator, Cambridge science historian John van Wyhe.

The additions aren't all hard-core science. Visitors can check out the cream-heavy dishes in his wife's recipe book and browse her diary.

http://www.darwin-online.org.uk/