Charles Darwin was born into a world in which taxonomy was already the established scientific language for expressing the diversity of life. In Europe and its colonies around the world, a growing community of museum workers, wealthy collectors, and avid hobbyists named and classified kinds of plants and animals numbering in the tens of thousands, a number that was increasing at a dizzying rate (Farber 2000). As a boy, Darwin absorbed samples of this community’s output, using taxonomists’ names for flowers in his father’s garden and for birds shot for sport; in his university years, he began to interact with taxonomists. Years later, he recollected those carefree days:

Childish though Darwin’s collecting hobby seemed to him later, it meant that as an undergraduate he was familiar with current taxonomic ideas and practices; without this familiarity, Professor Henslow would not have recommended him for the Beagle voyage.