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...think of Charles Darwin as a kindly-looking old man with a big beard, but let's wind the clock back to the vigorous 22-year old embarking in 1831 on the voyage of a lifetime around the world on the survey ship, HMS Beagle. Recently down from Cambridge, his training there for the clergy had assured him that species were fixed in character, having been divinely created with...

...think of the sounds of nature: the rhythmic swash and backwash of the waves, or heavy rollers crashing on the rocks; the sound of seabirds as they swoop and dive for food or jostle for nesting space on a cliff; or perhaps it is the sound of the wind stirring the reeds and grasses along the banks of a sheltered estuary. Alternately, we may imagine sounds which evoke a...