Charles Darwin loved Wales and spent many summers there before he sailed round the world on the Beagle. One of his favourite places was Cwm Idwal which he visited in August 1831 studying the geology and then studying glaciation in 1842.
In the years before 1831 he spent several summers in north Wales and stayed at Plas y Brenin, the coaching inn in Capel Curig. Plas y Brenin overs looks Llynau Mymbyr and to Snowdon beyond, but it often looks like this
But it can look this this with the Snowdon peaks in all their majesty.
Darwin stayed here in 1842 when he was halfway through writing his first synopsis of natural selection, which was later expanded into the book we know so well.
Gray correspondence
After the Origin Darwin wrote several monographs over the next twenty years and in 1868 published Variation of Animals and Plants under variation. As the book progressed it moved from artificial selection to the variation of flora and fauna in nature , which he argued changed due to natural selection.
At the very end of volume two Darwin, in his attempt to negate Asa Gray’s challenges, wrote of a house made from uncut stone at the base of a cliff;
I may recur to the metaphor given in a former chapter: if an architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as the paramount power.
For many years I have reckoned that to be the Ugly House on a sharp bend of the A5 between Betws y Coed and Capel Curig. Darwin had passed it several times as he went along the London to Holyhead turnpike en route to Snowdonia or even Dublin at various times from 1825 to 1842. When it was built is a mystery. Legend says it was the 15th century but it was not mentioned in travel books until 1853. The first edition O.S. map of Holyhead and Bangor was published in stages and that including Betws y Coed was published on 1st April 1841. It marks the Ugly House and thus predates 1841. Darwin passed by in both directions in June 1842 en route to research the glaciation of Snowdonia. as the Ugly House is on a sharp bend it is and was impossible to miss. However, even if Darwin was not thinking of it, it illustrates what Darwin was saying in his book. However they were not serving excellent coffee and walnut cake then!
This is the end view. The two shrubs in the foreground are very aptly berberis darwinii, which Darwin discovered in Chile.
Here’s a closer shot of the wall made of random fragments, great and small. The skill is in selecting the right stone for the wall.
This photo shows the finished wall. I cannot but note that the largest stones are at the bottom. It is a wonderful example of selection giving rise to something new.
Here is the section from the last pages of his book on Variations
Darwin, C. R. 1868. The variation of animals and plants under domestication. London: John Murray. 1st ed, 1st issue. Volume 2.
Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount power, whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or by nature to the production of species. I may recur to the metaphor given in a former chapter: if an architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as the paramount power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to the edifice built by him the same relation which the fluctuating variations of each organic being bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by its modified descendants.
To understand this we need to think of building a stone wall from uncut stone. This is very common in the dry-stone walls of the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales. Dry-stone walling depends on the builder being able to select the right stone to be place in any given place. The skill required is considerable and even more for this “window” onto Ingleborough in a rebuilt drystone wall in the Dales. This is a more challenge to select the right stone for the right place and one can imagine the trial and error needed to find the right stone.
I witnessed the process when the churchyard wall of rough stones was demolished by a car at my church in Chirk. (Fanny, Darwin’s first girl-friend is buried in the crypt a few feet from where I, as vicar, led the services!) The waller was expected to give a detailed account of how he would do it to the insurance company. Wilf was stumped! But it was fascinating watching him as he would pick up a stone, look at it, and contemplate it. At times he would put it straight back in the pile and take another one. Other times he would try to place it in the wall and then return it to the pile. And then he would find one which fitted. It was almost a case of chance AND necessity. Or was it a form of intelligent design? An architect has to be a good designer. Or rather ought to be as in recent years architects have developed a skill in designing carbuncles.
There was a similar process used in the selection of stones and building of the Ugly House, but I would not fancy picking up the larger stones to see if they would fit and then returning them to the pile if the did not! No wonder Darwin admired “the paramount power” of the architect – both for his skill and samson-like strength.
But, is it a good analogy?
It is almost giving “mind” to natural selection as Gray pointed out in his review. Gray wanted a divinely guided evolution but Darwin did not, yet here with his architect-cum-builder, he almost has the same understanding.
Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. Now, if it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat stones for the roof, &c.; and if the use of each part and of the whole building were pointed out, it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been
[page] 431made clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each fragment could not be given. But this is a nearly parallel case with the objection that selection explains nothing, because we know not the cause of each individual difference in the structure of each being.
The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct; for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws; on the nature of the rock, on the lines of deposition or cleavage, on the form of the mountain which depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly on the storm or earthquake which threw down the fragments.
Here is Darwin the geologist considering all the natural ways rocks are formed. He had known the difference between bedding (lines of deposition) and cleavage since his visit to Wales with Sedgwick in 1831. Cleavage fascinated him on the Beagle voyage and for some years after that. And for poetic effect he threw in an earthquake throwing down the fragments, and drawing on his experience of an earthquake in Chile.
But in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. And here we are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I am aware that I am travelling beyond my proper province. An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him.
But can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have determined the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder’s sake, can it with any greater probability be maintained that He specially ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants;— many of these variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man’s brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case,—if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigour, might be formed,—no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result [page] 432 of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief “that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines,” like a stream “along definite and useful lines of irrigation.”
Here Darwin homed in on the problems of a divinely guided evolution/variation. This comment stems from his discussion by letter with Asa Gray after the publication of The Origin in 1859. Did God make the stones a certain shape so they could be used for the Ugly House? Gray seems to imply that variation was guided by God and “that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines,” like a stream “along definite and useful lines of irrigation.”.
Now Darwin wants randomly formed stones but perhaps we can say that Gray reckoned each stone or variation was cut into the required shape by God, as this early urinal in the Geological Society of London building was made of cut marble, rather than of random marble blocks. I chose this example as Darwin would have used it many times, as I have on occasion!
So at Ty Hwll we have random blocks and those at the Geological Society are carefully cut “along certain beneficial lines.”
Gray had raised a serious problem which Darwin did not entirely answer as he ended up with random variation but a controlled and intelligent selection rather than a natural or random selection. Perhaps he was stymied! He wanted uncut stone but Gray did not. He may have felt like this!!
(This is Darwin’s statue outside of Darwin’s school in Shrewsbury. It was built in the1590s to 1630 and is now the public library and Darwin has sat outside since 1897. The stones of cut New Red Sandstone.)
I shall allow Gray to comment in his review; 
The logic of Darwin is chance formation for the stones but is ambiguous on the architect or builder, as it seems to go against Natural Selection. Gray prefers “variation has been led along certain beneficial lines”, but that has problems of its own, especially for deleterious variations which impinge on the goodness of God. Neither give a satisfactory answer.
In a letter to Darwin on 25 May 1868, Gray wrote, ‘I found your stone-house argument unanswerable in substance (for the notion of design must after all rest mostly on faith, and on accumulations of adaptions, etc.)….. I understand your argument, and feel the might of it.’ Gray was now adopting the argument from God to design, and used design in a very generalised manner.
Darwin’s belief in 1868 was less theistic, or rather more agnostic, than it was in 1860 when he wrote to Gray (22 May 1860) after expressing his moral concerns with Ichneumonidae saying ‘On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe….& to conclude that everything is the result of brute force (chance).’
If the Ugly House was the model for Darwin’s “stonehouse” then all the rocks used were tough, hard rocks of varying shapes and sizes, which would simply have been called Greywacke, when he visited Snowdonia in 1831. But there are other varieties of rocks! Thus it could soft clay (I will never forget collecting a sample of the Triassic Spearfish Formation in South Dakota by using a spoon to dig it out!), crumbly sandstone (as with some Triassic sandstone in Britain), any other crumbly rock, be it schist or not, or a rock weakened by faults. If you are building a house then these are deleterious variations and the opposite of beneficial. Darwin clearly grasped this, whereas Gray had not. Darwin was already aware of inherited defects and was even concerned about marrying his cousin. However Darwin was very fortunate to have a wife like Emma.
Darwin was not aware of genetics and never read Mendel’s paper. As a result the passing on of hereditary traits baffled him and his ideas of blending inheritance explained little and confused much. With an increasing understanding of genetics after 1900 clarified matters and showed the limitation of his analogy of a stonehouse.
But in a way the understanding of genes and the understanding genetics does not alter the position between Gray and Darwin and we soon have to consider suffering, which was a greater problem for Darwin than Gray. He had moral revulsion of parasitic ichneumon wasps and a cat playing with a mouse, not to mention human suffering.
If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, the plasticity of organisation, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as that redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature.
It seems that Darwin almost argues for mutations , good and bad. The situation is much clearer today after 150 years of research in genetics and chromosomes. But the implications on suffering, morality and the goodness of God (if He exists!) were as clear then as they are today. To Darwin the ichneumon fly casts doubt on the benevolence of God as he wrote to the Christian botanist Asa Gray on 22nd May 1860 on issues raised by The Origin of Species. He wrote;
I cannot persuade myself that a benificient &omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intent of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that cats should play with mice.
This is discussed here
https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2022/04/12/darwins-wasps-and-good-friday/
and in a more general paper on Darwin and design I wrote in the 1990s.
And so Darwin finishes with a flourish, almost throwing his hands in the air;
On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination.
To which I will add suffering and think of the poor caterpillar acting host to the ichneumon larvae, which eats it up from the inside just keeping the poor thing alive.
Here are two great scientists thrashing out an essential aspect which soon goes beyond the science. Neither Gray nor Darwin had a resolution to this dilemma, or trilemma. Nor do I. Perhaps we can explainthe mechanism of evolution but not the meaning.
I do not want three comforters coming along tearing their robes, throwing dust in the air and making me look stupid. Perhaps Job’s fifth Comforter was more helpful when he said;
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” Job 38 vs2-4
My understanding is limited, but I grasp enough to give me some insight. As a Christian my bottom line is Goddidit but am baffled how! I reckon both Gray and Darwin are closer to understanding than I am. But I still like the coffee and walnut cake at the Ugly House.
Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin 