Charles Darwin. Caricature of the British natural- ist Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) with a worm. Darwin studied medicine and theology, but was most interested in natural history. In 1831, he joined the HMS Beagle as a naturalist on its five year global voyage. This provided the data for his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). He proposed that natural variat- ion in a species creates many individual traits, some more useful than others. Evolution arises from only those offspring with the most beneficial traits surviving. His ideas were opposed by the Church, but are now largely accepted. Taken from an 1881 issue of the British magazine Punch.