The Darwin Children’s Doodles

These drawings are too charming to miss.

Charles Darwin and his wife Emma had ten children who obviously loved drawing on the back pages of Darwin’s manuscripts. I think they give a look into the domestic world behind an icon of science. You must look at “The Battle of the Fruit and Vegetable Soldiers”! They remind me of Pamela Allen’s wonderfully comic drawings in books like Bertie and the Bear.  (The sketch in the feature image above is one of Darwin’s, from a page of his note book, from Wikimedia Commons.)

There is a slide show in this article from the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/slide-show-darwin-children-doodles

Or you can scroll through the photos on the post from the blog of the American Museum of Natural History. (There are also some very weird comments in the comments section.)

http://kinja.amnh.org/darwins-kids-doodled-all-over-his-origin-of-species-m-1685423397

(I have a passion for natural history and the people who have developed our scientific understanding of our world. I hope to post little treasures like this as I come across them. Any suggestions are more than welcome.)