Charles Darwin? J.B.S. Haldane?
Dear Quote Investigator: I have been studying rain forests and came across the following passage in a New York Times article [NYFB]:
Charles Darwin surmised that the Creator must be inordinately fond of beetles: the earth is home to some 30 million different species of them.
The phrase “inordinately fond of beetles” makes me chuckle, and I can imagine the creator carefully designing each beetle. But I have read The Voyage of the Beagle and this phrase does not sound like something that Darwin would say. Could you investigate this phrase?
Quote Investigator: Your suspicions of the Darwin attribution are justified, and QI has located the most likely originator of the saying. But the words “possibly apocryphal” appear even in the earliest citation.