200 years ago Charles Darwin changed the face of Ascension Island in a unique ecological experiment that could hold the secret to colonizing Mars.

Ascension was an arid island, buffeted by dry trade winds from southern Africa. Devoid of trees at the time of Darwin and Hooker’s visits, the little rain that did fall quickly evaporated away.

Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens – where Hooker’s father was director – shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.

The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The “cinder” would become a garden.

So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.

Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot.

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Here is something I did not know about Charles Darwin: his family was inbred and it affected his children.

He is the father of evolution, whose discoveries revolutionised our understanding of genetics.

But even Charles Darwin was not exempt from the vagaries of DNA.

Three of Darwin’s 10 children died in childhood, while another three never had any children of their own, despite being married for years.

A study of the scientist’s family tree suggests inbreeding was to blame, with frequent cousin to cousin marriages lowering immunity to disease and raising the odds of infertility.

Darwin’s mother, Susannah, was the daughter of third cousins, one of which was Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the pottery dynasty of the same name.

Darwin’s wife, Emma Wedgwood, was his first cousin, while the Wedgwood family tree contained several other marriages between cousins.

The couple had ten children – four girls and six boys – between 1839 and 1858. But only seven survived to adulthood.

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An academic is claiming that Charles Darwin suffered from a genetic vomiting disorder.

Darwin often became a virtual recluse during the worst episodes.

Previous theories regarding the cause of his illness have included hypochondria or panic disorders, while others claimed the problems lay with ‘repressed anger towards his father’, nervousness about his relationship with his wife or guilt over conflict with his earlier religious beliefs.

However, writing in the British Medical Journal online, Prof John Hayman, claimed it was probably cyclical vomiting syndrome. As well as vomiting, the condition causes nausea, headaches, stomach and skin problems – all symptoms from which the On the Origin of the Species aothor suffered.

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English Heritage has launched an appeal to track down one of Charles Darwin’s Galapagos notebook, which was probably stolen in the early 1980s.

Sadly, the Galapagos notebook has never been seen since its disappearance from Darwin’s Kent home, Down House near Orpington. It is likely a visitor took the opportunity to steal the Galapagos book while they were on public display.

The naturalist’s great-great-grandson, Randal Keynes, said it was “almost certainly stolen”.

He said: “Our family always felt that the best Darwin material should be at Down House so that the public could see it in his home. The Galapagos notebook is of outstanding value for the history of science.

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A first edition of On the Origin of the Species has been found on a shelf in a guest bathroom in southern England.

Christie’s auction house said Sunday the book — one of around 1,250 copies first printed in 1859 — had been on a toilet bookshelf at a family’s home in Oxford.

The book will be auctioned on Tuesday, the 150th anniversary of the publication of the famous work. Christie’s said the book is likely to sell for 60,000 pounds ($99,000).

Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” outlined his theory of natural selection, the foundation for the modern understanding of evolution.

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