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Fossils, Finches and Fuegians: Charles Darwin’s adventures and discoveries on the Beagle, 1832–1836 by Richard Keynes, HarperCollins, £25, ISBN 0007101899

NONE of the books about Darwin’s famous voyage seems to deal with it adequately. They either describe just an adventure, or treat it only as the source of the scientific observations and discoveries that led to Darwin’s famous shock to the fortress of accepted ideas about the origins of life. Richard Keynes aims to fix this with Fossils, Finches and Fuegians.

He opens with the reasons that got Darwin on the Beagle in the first place, including the appeal of the shape of his nose to its captain, Robert Fitzroy. After that come the adventures and the science—and certainly both are recounted here. Hostile natives, ferocious weather, quarrels with Fitzroy and the mysteries of Admiralty instructions alternate with Darwin’s travels ashore, omnivorous observations, startling finds of the bones of prehistoric animals and his notes about all of them.

But what is missing from the tale is a sense of excitement. There is, of course, plenty of interest in the extracts from Darwin’s notes and the occasionally vivid writing from Fitzroy, but the linking narrative moves on in measured, colourless words, whether they are about shipwreck or fried tortoise. It does little more than keep an eye on the calendar. Some may think the adventures are still being short-changed.