"Picture a hot day in August 1877. Darwin, by now, is an old man, the leaping pole long since discarded. He has a long white beard that makes him look vaguely like an Old Testament prophet or, as one of his eulogists would write, ‘an ancient philosopher’. He has travelled some distance from home to attend the excavation of the ruins of a Roman villa discovered beneath a field in Surrey."
https://aeon.co/essays/the-insight-of-darwins-work-on-corals-worms-and-co-evolution