Good morning. Good morning, and welcome to the new York Botanical garden to parking lot library were are are very glad that you are here many my cohost david scone so on his way director of the darvin manuscript project at the museum of Natural History joining us soon. Special welcome to the other Staff Members and researchers from the American Museum of history very pleased youre here and thank you, thank you. And also to the students and research from fordham university. The pleasure to have you here. This morning, our focus, of course, is darwin. All of you have a special relationship with this man. And today well focus on his backyard experiments and dr. James costa will guide us through this story. Hes inspiring scientist and claimed author of the new book. Dada darwin backyard and you have or already seen that you are actually able to purchase a year after the presentation, and have doctor costa with jim so well call him spernl personal message for you. While people are standing in line to buy that book, we have a First Edition and very rare sample of the darwin materials the library is so lucky to have. And for you also to know that you can come back to research our special collections in that field. Very happy that publicist and senior publicist kyle and the editor of the book amy cherry are here to joins us. They have been as you may have noticed sol really excellent book reviews out about darwin about jims book and New York Times mentioned it specifically as most inventive and entertaining so there you go. But all agree that the key argument is many this book that advance technologies are not really necessary to develop sophisticated knowledge biology and ecology and it is good for us all to hear. All it takes it to probe nature secret is a bit of createssivety and resourcefulness is what jim writes in the bng and to prove this, he has added some of darwins quirky do it yourself household experiments. And readers try those out in their own backyard or in our case our wind sills in new york city. The book is there for ib valuable to also students and Young Students and here to new York Botanical garden were looking forward to welcoming many of the new naturalist who is have read about this book and inspired to become botanists themselves. It is my create pleasure and privilege to introduce dr. James costa now. Jim is an executive director are of the biological station and rousers of biology at western carolina university. Where he teacheses evolution and darwin and hes at Harvard Museum and former fellow of the Radcliffe Institute or for advance study as well as the recent many berlin. In berlin. Lectures in the u. S. And abroad and currently serving as a distinguished lecturer and trustee flts Charles Darwin trust. Hes author it have wallace, darwin and origin of species under organic law of change, and the origin. Jim lives in the blue ridge mpghts mountains of North Carolina the test to come to visit us in the big city and tell us more about darwin. Please help me in welcoming him. [applause] thank you very much. Wow. It is great to be here i cant adequately express my gratitude always nice to come in from are the province great to be back in my home state wonderful to see family here. Old friends and colleagues, and darwin enthusiasts, some thanks are in order. David im deemly grateful, of course, to vanessa and team here at the Botanical Garden for hosting me and friend and colleague of the American Museum for cosponsoring this event it is really such a special privilege and pleasure and, of course, i want to thank too Wonderful Team at norton kyle was mentioned and amy cher rei my editor really they have been wonderful to work with and very, very grateful for them as well, and of course i would be remiss if i didnt acknowledge any wife leslie unfortunately is not here with me today who did many of the illustrations for this book so so many thanks for many thanks for all of you being here. Is it okay. There we go. Okay this is a special privilege what i hope to do is really share with you maybe a perspective on Charles Darwin that is new to you. You know when we think about about Charles Darwin, you know image that comes to mind might be characterized by portrait or other images and you consider these photographs and portraits of darwin and you cant help but think this is a melancholy guy. This is a guy bummed out much of the time hes maybe tormtd. Hes sad. You know, hes usually late in lives but hes always very serious. And you know i came to realize over years of studying dour win and his time these give us inaccurate portrait of darwin more about victorian portrait convention maybe limitation of Photographic Technology than they do the person. So darwin that im familiar with is a rather infish darwin. You know the darwin that im familiar with is a dad is a husband, is a friend, is a correspondent. Is darwin who is, you know, has a sense of humor hes a real jokester who can be selfderei are kateing theres a other whole aspect to darwin that i find endlessly fascinating, and i thought you know theres nothing that better tells the story of the reality Charles Darwin than his pension for experiment and way miss which that engaged his family, his friends, his correspondents from around the world. This is this is a quote from darwin that i love. I love fools experiments im always making them. He, you know, thats selfdeprecating kind of way and referred to his sports as fool experiments. And he makes fun of himself and makes fun of the experiments they are quirky and curious they are odd but theyre all to an interesting point an interesting scientific point behind them and thats worth exploring. Now many of you will know i think, that darwin as a young man in his 20s traveled around the world on h sen s beg beagle and became home bodies after returning home even aside from some limited travel up to scotland and certainly family holidays to the seaside. He never really left home again. You know he married in 1949 wedding portrait and his wife emma, and over the years they had ten children. Only seven of whom survived to adulthood, and so certainly like many families of that period, there were tragedies. So yes certainly there were time when is darwin has a melancholy aspect. But i think that you know more times than not, i mean, the darwin that comes through in his correspondents, his interactions with the friends and family is more the radical darwin thats the darwin i would like to introduce you to. All right. So you know, and involving the kids says a lot about darwin and his work and all sorts of glimpses in way in which his kids were involved or o very much aware of his work i for example, u you know there was about an eightyearold period when he study barnacles barnacles some of the young ones as they were growing up all they knew was barnacles dad did barnacle and one of the kids visiting friends home looked arpgd puzzled where does your dad do his barnacles like you know for all he knew every kids dad does barnacles. You know, just understandable. You know. [laughter] there was an interesting episode mystery of the buzzing bumblebees and we understand this today in terms of trap lining behavior and marking, you know, marking ceremonially different wait point but they didnt know that. That communication wasnt known so theyre trying to figure it out and in characterize fashion Charles Darwin rallies troop ares they get kids out and theyre running around garden trying to mark bees with throwr to make them more visible zooming around to track them and understand what theyre doing. Years later Leonard Darwin had remembered his dad as at that time and that study he was like a boy amongst other boys. You know he was just out there running arranged in the garden with little ones you know crawling arranged in the hedge rows and so on. This one other little episode that you know glimpse here to share with you that says something about Charles Darwin and his relationship with his kids. You know, this is this is a little mote many a publication you can imagine was maybe not the most widely read and weekly intelligencer [laughter] everybody subscribe [laughter] and you know heres a little note about some rare beetses found near the house and this is signed Francis Leonard and darwin ages 11, 9, and 8 you young collectors here clearly is the proud dad with this note to this little peer i had cool proud as can be hes a beetle collector himself and here his kids are out there collecting beetles too so i see this in some ways more telling publication from 1859 you be the same year that saw origin of species published which is pretty interesting. So you know, Darwin Darwins experiments you know his weird, wild wonderful endless series of experiments all took place almost literally in his in his backyard, i mean, in his study and green house buts in the woodlands in the meadows in his lawn. I have long been struck by how fun these can be for a modern audience certainly. Sometimes very quirky kind of odd not the fact that theyre always interest and interesting point to them as he makes them provide a really interesting hook for engaging todays Young Students perhaps. Right these are as vanessa mentioned eminently accessible and these are experiments that were conducted on parking lot fly literally in the yard. No sophisticated equipment no precision or special consideration for experimental design and analytical proceed all of that and one interested in the history of ecology and evolution, is how often seminal foundational principles in these fields have their origin opinion in these literally backyard experiments done almost, almost on the fly. So this makes the these make the makes experiments access public easily duplicated by that and of course adapt to believe any age group that can be scaled up or down you can run these with kirngders you can run twhem college age students. Something for anyone right any grade or age. So what was that about . Curiosity that really drives any kind of investigation. Right of that natural pattern, process and that drove a lot of this. But after a while, i mean, Darwin Darwin came to a fascinating evolutionary understand uing of the world. Perhaps at a time with when no one else did. And so part of his experimentizing became an perfect to gatser evidence a new way of understanding the nature and the origin of species often here using those local case studies and seeing universal principles in his yard i find that fascinating. So many of you who have maybe venture haded into on the origin of species will remember that in that book, darwin refers to the origin as one long argument. Well what does he mean by that . This coverage, paleontology and domestication and so on and so forth yet it all hangs together as cohesive argument but what you may not have noticed how often many of those arguments are based upon or by these fascinating backyard experiments. So the book behind the book is really this book. To me, and in a sense right darwins experiment book by one of those works which he recorded very kiengdz of experiments and their results fascinating book that now resides in Cambridge University library. An you know so much can be said about how darwin did it for starters ill giveout species how disuse species become distributed as we see them on earth . Right. Now im not going to go all of these speerts but it is just a sample her of the kind of often rather odd investigations you know, season salt water hitchhike per experience with ducks feet about which ill say something. Dunking ducks in duck weed crawling around collecting bird droppings to dissect out the seeds and so on an so forth and give you xeamples of the various experiments aimed to try to puns disperse think about remote islands islands never in contact with a a mainland a continental mainland how theyre clothed with plants. Many animals how do they get there . Well it is easy enough to see how a flying animal might be blown off course by storm or something. But a lot of these critters they dont fly. Right how do they get there . So hes kind of thinking about this and he irings we also floating you know sometimes carried but often just floating right, and so you know, the question becomes well could they float . Could the seeds of species floats and somehow make it to a speck of land in the middle of the ocean somewhere. Well his good friend joseph the botanist didnt think so he thought it was nonsense and couldnt survive exposure to salt water this wont work. Darwin said wheres the evidence you know can you demonstrate that . No hooker couldnt so, of course, darwin decides to do it himself. And he doesnt do things by halving but throws himself into this project. Where you know he has jr. After jar of salt water and he just fills the cellar house is practically pulse of these jars of salt water, species after species after species floating seeds, taking samples you know periodically will they germinate after a week what about two weeks what about a month . What about three months . Awe, you know success they do seem to survive exposure oftentimes not always and this time the kids were really kind of rooting for their dad. They knew that joseph hook per was, you know, he was dubious of the qhoals enterprise darwin confided to hooker in a letter that children were at first tremendously eying per and scdz me often whether i should prove him wrong and indeed he was triumphant that species after species proved to be, you know viable after exposure to salt water. Except then hooker point something out that was inconvenient i said a lot of those seeds youve been testing they sink well this is a problem. Because you know thats a point whether they can survive if theyre never going to float out to an island so in another letter to hooker rather theyll sink and taking this trouble salting ungrateful rascals for nothing. You know those letters again theyre a window theyre a window into a personality theyre a window into a person. I find that, that fascinating and you know, its also emblematic of darwin undaunt sod what does he do . Lets try drying seeds lets try seeds in dry fruit still adhering to foliage so page after page of the experiment book is dedicated to floating all for a matters of species sending specimen from the garden procuring from all over the place, and to his satisfaction hes able to show that a significant number of these can can float for extended periods they remine viable for extended periods, if you look at a an atlas of sogs kurnghts you can calculate how far they can be carried in principle thousands of miles and so hooker of course was duly chasened came to agree, well you know, as with mentioned ting that an experiment like this is em nangt accessible and fun for modern audience old and young so for example, in any chapter of this book i have a kind of do it yourself section where people can replicate experiments, and so for example, you know you can experimenttize about darwin getting arranged. You can look at seeds many a pickle rights and you can test for vary viability over periods of time. Great fun or a related topic that was remote oceanic islands what about pons and lakes islands on the land . Right how do aquatic oral nisms get to lake to lake so ducks something to do with this. Ducks surely and envisioning that ducks when theyre sleeping are dangling their feet this the water and hitchhikers will, you know, perhaps climb onis board and ducks wake up and off they go and they fly hundreds of miles to carry hitchhikers and hes fascinated by this. This is a do it yourself version of his experiment his version of this used actual ducks feet which he severed, of course. But he probably ate the duck, i mean, therm dinner. He would dangle to see if snails would climb onboard and pull them out when they did and they did. And he would see how long can they survive outside of water. You know, any hour, 24 hours, 28 hours well perfect how far could a duck fly . In 28 hours you know they could be carrying hundreds and hundreds of miles well i want to fin ties kids to test this but i dont them to necessarily be chopping legs off of ducks as you might understand. And so you know, i give introduction for building your own model duck foot very simple defuse a bobber ore pingpong ball and woodsen owl and fabric duck foot and attach it to a line as you see my younger son opinion doing here eli, and you can go fishing for aquatic hitchhikers darwin great fun ive done this with educate or tores, students me own kids and remarkable how much thing use catch with with your dark feet so darwin once again vindicated there but he wasnt content with doing a backyard experiment and ing at this but this is one area where darwin becomes crowd sourcer. And so here for example, are four letters all publish in the gardeners chronicle in 1855 what are these about . These are about asking readers has anyone ever tried this does anyone know if seeds will float or in salt water will they survive salt water i would appreciate it if people would sending me results send in results, and on letter after letter, of course sufficiently famous by them that readers were very happy to do this and sending in results and to send them to him, to the magazine so many of these in the species and reported in origin on of species. So i considered darwin to be original crowd sourcer to good effect in other areas whenever he would need sort of a big or picture sense of will this work . He would publish an open letter and try to get people to send in send in resultses that really fun and theres one other really interesting aspect to this. This whole enterprise, and this is darwins openness to seemingly oddest experimentses. So here again were on the subject of dispersible so Francis Darwin was known as frankie when he was a kid when he was eight years old he came up with this experiment and darwin described it in a loart to joseph hook tear and he says i must tell you another of my profound experiments you can see hes sort of tongue and cheek propounds. You know. Franky said to me job shouldnt a bird be killed by a hawk our lightning or something with seeds in its crop so a bird that is eating seats fly along over ocean and lightning strikes or hail strike it is or something and or poor bi