The Price Of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness

by Oren Harman

After all, if one great lesson had been gleaned from the journey, it was the awesome abundance of life on the planet. On the massive vines of “wonderful” kelp off the coast of Tierra del Fuego, plummeting forty-five fathoms into the darkness, Darwin found patelliform shells, troche, mollusks, bivalves, and innumerable crustacea. When he shook, out came “small fish, shells, cuttle-fish, crabs of all orders, sea-eggs, star-fish, beautiful holuthuriae, planariae, and crawling nereidous animals of a multitude of forms.” The “great entangled roots” reminded Darwin of tropical forests, swarming with every imaginable species of ant and beetle rustling beneath the feet of giant capybaras and slit-eyed lizards, under the watchful gaze of carrion hawks. The splendor and variation were endless. “The form of the orange tree, the coconut, the palm, the mango, the tree-fern, the banana,” Darwin wrote nostalgically, surveying the tropical panorama at Bahia as the Beagle pushed for home, “will remain clear and separate; but the thousand beauties which unite these into one perfect scene must fade away; yet they will leave, like a tale heard in childhood, a picture full of indistinct, but most beautiful figures.”23