{"id":66456,"date":"2026-03-27T15:50:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T15:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/?p=66456"},"modified":"2026-05-11T10:27:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T09:27:21","slug":"zoological-colour-on-hms-beagle-charles-darwins-chromatic-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2026\/03\/27\/zoological-colour-on-hms-beagle-charles-darwins-chromatic-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoological colour on HMS Beagle: Charles Darwin\u2019s chromatic language"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On 25 April 1832 the Royal Navy vessel HMS Beagle <\/em>was anchored in the blue waters of Botafogo Bay, Brazil. The naturalist Charles Darwin (1809\u20131882) was leaving the Beagle<\/em> in a small boat, en route<\/em> to a temporary residence on the mainland, when a series of waves swamped the vessel and scattered his \u2018most useful\u2019 possessions into the sea. Likely among these floating items was a copy of Werner\u2019s Nomenclature of Colours<\/em> (1821) \u2013 an illustrated colour vocabulary authored by Patrick Syme (1774\u20131845).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Water-damaged and exhibiting pencil annotations in Darwin\u2019s hand, the Beagle <\/em>copy of Syme\u2019s book is now held in Cambridge University Library. Its charts contain 110 painted samples of colour, each associated with examples from the \u2018Animal\u2019, \u2018Vegetable\u2019 and \u2018Mineral\u2019 kingdoms. \u2018Gamboge Yellow\u2019, for example, can be found on the wings of the goldfinch, the flowers of yellow jasmine and the mineral sulphur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First published in 1814, Syme\u2019s book was based on the mineralogical colour system developed by Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749\u20131817). Expanded in number and scope, and published in compact octavo \u2014 a pocket-sized 10 x 20 centimetres \u2014 it served to extend the observatory skillset of the nineteenth-century naturalist. Werner\u2019s Nomenclature of Colours<\/em> was used widely among British naturalists in the first half of the century, its distinct terms appearing in handwritten field notes and in richly-illustrated publications on zoological and botanical subjects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darwin\u2019s own use of Werner\u2019s Nomenclature <\/em>began a few weeks into the Beagle<\/em> voyage of 1831\u20136. The young naturalist adopted Syme\u2019s specific colour vocabulary as a standard for his scientific notetaking, routinely consulting its pages for the identification and articulation of natural hues. Darwin found Werner\u2019s Nomenclature <\/em>especially valuable for describing the colours of zoological specimens. His zoology notes (also in Cambridge University Library) contain hundreds of references to Syme\u2019s terms: the \u2018tile red\u2019 body and \u2018scarlet red\u2019 prickles of a starfish, encountered beneath a sky of \u2018pale ultramarine\u2019 and \u2018Berlin blue\u2019; the markings of a snake, \u2018primrose yellow\u2019 and \u2018scarlet red\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My recent article in BJHS<\/em> reveals for the first time the extent of Darwin\u2019s reliance on Werner\u2019s Nomenclature<\/em> for collecting and communicating chromatic data, across distance and against the fugitive nature of natural hues. Its discussion of this captivating case study sheds light on the difficulties of accurate colour notation in exploratory natural history, investigating the various measures and mechanisms available to the nineteenth-century naturalist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image credit: Charles Darwin\u2019s copy of Werner\u2019s Nomenclature of Colours<\/em> (1821) by Patrick Syme. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘Capturing colour on HMS Beagle<\/em>: Charles Darwin and Werner\u2019s Nomenclature of Colours<\/em> (1821)<\/a>‘ by Joyce Dixon is out now in issue of The British Journal for the History of Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 25 April 1832 the Royal Navy vessel HMS Beagle was anchored in the blue waters of Botafogo Bay, Brazil. The naturalist Charles Darwin (1809\u20131882) was leaving the Beagle in a small boat, en route to a temporary residence on the mainland, when a series of waves swamped the vessel and scattered his \u2018most useful\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":823,"featured_media":68109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[452,1448,451,303,591,27,7959],"coauthors":[12176],"class_list":["post-66456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-humanities","tag-bjhs","tag-bjhs-themes","tag-british-journal-for-the-history-of-science","tag-british-society-for-the-history-of-science","tag-history-of-science","tag-history-of-science-and-medicine","tag-history-of-science-and-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66456"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68111,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66456\/revisions\/68111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66456"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=66456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}