Mr Darwin's Shooter

Mr Darwin's Shooter is a 1998 novel by Roger McDonald. It describes the life of Syms Covington, manservant to Charles Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle.

The book deals with three periods of Covington's life: childhood, adolescence whilst on the HMS Beagle, and middle age, where Covington is struggling to deal with the conflict between his religious views and his role in the formulation of the theory of natural selection. Among the many animals Syms Covington shot and prepared for Charles Darwin were the Galápagos finches, which became crucial for his theory.