Map charting the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1831-6. From the appendix to the narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836, describing their examination of the Southern shores of South America, and the Beagle's circumnavigation of the globe, edited by R. Fitzroy and published in 1839. The Beagle carried Charles Darwin during the voyage that inspired his theory of evolution. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was an English naturalist and geologist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.