On this day in 1882, Charles Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey, having died at Down House on 19th April. His pall bearers included Joseph Hooker and Alfred Russell Wallace.

Darwin’s last published work, in @nature 6th April 1882, concerned the work of Walter Drawbridge Crick, Francis’ grandfather, on how a cockle hitchhiked on the leg of a beetle, thus aiding its dispersal.

Some choice quotations from the man himself:

‘If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.’ 1836

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!

Letter to Hooker, 1856

‘I’m not very skeptical… a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men, who… have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations which would have proven servicable.’

‘Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.’

‘We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities… still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.’

DoM, 1871

‘An American monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men.’

DoM, 1871

On slavery: