SCIENCE RECOGNISED

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3811, 21 September 1936, Page 7

SCIENCE RECOGNISED

SPECIAL SET OF STAMPS. Distinguished men of science have, before now, been commemorated on postage stamps by countries sufficiently civilised to value their achievements, but it does not appear that any particular event in the history of science has hitherto been celebrated in this way (says Nature). It has been left to the public of Ecuador to mark, by the issue of a special series of stamps, the! centenary of a critical point in the development of the evolution theory. It was on 16th September, 1835, that Darwin first landed on Chatham Island, in the Galapagos Group, where, as he wrote in his “Journal efi Researches,” “we seem to be brought near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”

The stamps bear designs associated with the islands or with Darwin’s visit, the introduction of a portrait of Christopher Columbus being apparently suggested by the Ecuadorean name for the group, “Archipelago of Colon.”

The portrait of Darwin is taken from a well-known photograph now banging in Down House; it represents him in his old age, and is probably that by which he is best remembered, although at the time of his visit to the Galapago Islands he was, of course, a young man of 26 years.