Ruminations: A World Treasure Pilfered, Lifted, Absconded With : The Origin of Carelessness

Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species. (AP)

"We know they were photographed in November. But we do not know what happened between then and the time in January 2001, when it was determined they were not in their proper place on the shelves."
"There isn't anything on the remaining record which tells us anything more [about the missing Darwin notebooks]."
" [Theft] should be ruled in as a possibility from the start and that wasn't."
"Now, if anything of this scale and significance was not found, we would be going to the police."
"We won't stop looking. There are good examples where things have been found, thanks to the help of the public."
"So I would really appeal to members of the public, former staff, researchers, anyone who might have information which would shed light."
"[If anything, now is the time to] safely, even anonymously [get in touch]."
"It's possible they are under a bed, that's the best case scenario, someone has found they can't sell them or they're just holding on to them."
"It's those new leads we're looking for, with the help of the police, in order to help recover these for the nation."
Dr.Jessica Gardner, director of library services, Cambridge University Library

Priceless notebooks that were once studies written down by Charles Darwin leading to his world-famed observations and conclusions on the origins of life and of the ascent of humanity -- as life forms mutated and matured and adjusted themselves to their environments gradually over the aeons becoming more capable of sustaining their existence taking on new forms and adjustments in evolving to the forms known to this day -- purloined. They were held in stewardship by one of the world's most famous institutes of learning.

To infer by what is being made public that the Cambridge University Library was devoid of sufficient cautionary sense as to permit these treasured notebooks to be carried off for the purpose of being photographed as though this would be a casual event barely worth bothering about is mind-boggling. Microfiche is a technology that has been in use for decades. That the notebooks wouldn't have been copied in some form, digitized with meticulous care so that the originals would be permanently maintained in absolute secure conditions is not to be believed.

Given the inestimable historical, cultural, scientific value of the notebooks it is difficult to wrap one's mind around the fact that they could be taken from a secure storage unit ostensibly for a stated purpose -- copying -- by just anyone without exacting records being kept as to their whereabouts at any given moment, and that no one in authority appeared to have been involved and knowledgeable as to their entrusted handling and return leaves one incredulous.

The current head of library services is determined to find them and restore them to the possession of the library. On the basis of the library's utter failure in securing the notebooks for posterity, one would have to question the wisdom of permitting the notebooks, if and when found, to be returned to their care. It would appear that world-esteemed naturalist Charles Darwin's notebooks were removed from a storage room shelf, taken to some place on campus or a studio to be photographed. How perplexingly casual.

The Transmutation Notebooks (Cambridge University Library)

They were never seen again, according to the university librarian, appointed to the position 17 years after their disappearance. She had a "routine checkup" conducted several months earlier only to discover at that time that the books had never been returned to the shelves. Whereupon library curators undertook an "extensive search" in an effort to locate the missing notebooks, just incidentally valued in the millions. Finally the conclusion was reached that the books may have been misappropriated, stolen.

Library staff originally apparently assumed the notebooks to have been misfiled -- again stunning casualness. any time a search was undertaken to discover where the books might be in the library, the search failed. Essentially staff shrugged metaphorically assuming the books would some day turn up. The library at the venerable university measures over 200 kilometres of shelving and has in its care over ten million maps, manuscripts, and bound books, along with other objects.

Charles Darwin's 1837 "Tree of Life" sketch.

Cambridge University Library

The missing notebooks are no larger than the size of a postcard, stored in a blue box itself the size of a paperback. The current head librarian, Ms.Gardner, has launched a new probe to meticulously comb through storage areas, conducting "fingertip" checks within the collection of Darwin's books, drawings and letters, all 189 boxes of them. Nothing has been revealed. But Dr.Gardner insists she is "not willing to accept" the notebooks would eventually be found and had her team discuss the issue.

The earlier assumption that the books had merely been misshelved was rejected and current staff "completely reviewed what happened at the time. Reluctantly, I have decided that was not the right conclusion [misshelving]." The notebooks, Dr.Gardner now believes, had "probably been stolen". As the years progressed, security procedures were revised, reviewed and tightened, she said. As one might have hoped would be the case.

The Cambridgeshire Police have now been advised. They recorded the disappearance on the National Art Loss Register for missing cultural artifacts, and had the notebooks' disppearance placed on Interpol's database of stolen artworks. Even so, albeit unlikely, hope still exists that the notebooks might eventually be discovered having been inadvertently placed somewhere in the library on the wrong bookshelves....

"These notebooks really are Darwin's attempt to pose to himself the question about where do species come from, what is the origin of species?"
"It's almost like being inside Darwin's head when you're looking at these notebooks. They're jottings of all sorts of information that he's writing down."
"You have the sense of him working through these ideas at great speed and that kind of intellectual energy which I think the notebooks really convey."
"I'm a fan of James Joyce and it's always struck me that it's a bit like Leopold Bloom on steroids. You just get the sense of scientific imagination running really deep."
"To have such an iconic object go missing is really a tragedy."
Jim Secord, emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science, Cambridge University