Zoological Museum > Exhibitions > Permanent exhibitions > Evolution--Species at Work! > Evolution

Many people think that scientists work by adding page after page of dry scholarship to the book of  knowledge in a never-ending progression. It's true that natural science is built on facts - on observations and data. But Darwin is a shining example of how the big ideas and great discoveries in the natural sciences also spring from creativity and inspiration.

On first reviewing the mass of data, ideas and learning which he had accumulated both from his own research and other naturalists', Darwin only suspected that a new pattern was emerging. It would take many years of work for him to develop and present the evidence for his hypothesis.

One of the places Darwin used to wrestle with his thoughts was in the grounds of his country house in the village of Downe, south of London. Here he laid out what he called his "Thinking Path", the Sandwalk, and here he went for a daily walk. Inspired by this we've used the 'Sandwalk' as a central device of the exhibition. Along the Sandwalk the public meets the different elements of the exhibition which each in turn focus on a particular topic, such as  the evolution of man or how the first four-legged animals emerged from the ocean.

In order to understand the times and the context in which Darwin was working, the first things the visitor meets along the Sandwalk are the intellectual ideas which Darwin encountered, which moulded him and which were decisive in bringing to life in him the outlines of evolutionary thinking

The path also leads to two huge whale skeletons, which are joined by skeletons of a hippopotamus, a giraffe and a dromedary. That's because these animal groups are in fact related. The visitor will also see a reconstruction of an early proto-whale, Ambulocetus, which had four legs and still lived partly on land.

Another key element in the exhibition is a fine Galapagos diorama. Darwin visited the equatorial island group in 1835 during his round the world voyage in HMS Beagle. If the Galapagos islands deserve a special place in the exhibition, it's because in the time since Darwin they have continued to prove themselves a nearly inexhaustible source of new data which has expanded our understanding of evolution.

Darwin's cabin on the Beagle and his study at Down House in Kent, where he settled after his return to England, were also well worth reconstructing for the exhibition. The feeling of these rooms is in stark contrast to modern research labs as we know them (from TV for example), and it helps to illustrate the zeitgeist which his theories came up against.

Naturally the visitor to the exhibition also expects to see Darwin's Tree of Life. On a famous page from his notebooks from 1837, Darwin works out a natural historian's version of an evolutionary tree. The page begins with the words: "I think" on their own, and there follows his first known sketch of a tree-like outline, showing how new species branch off from the existing species, which in turn can be traced back to a common origin.  Phylogenetic trees appear today in countless scientific articles, from studies of the evolution of elephants to comparisons of strains of the HIV-virus, and the concept is an example of how far ahead of his time Darwin was.