British naturalist Charles Darwin is a young father who lives a quiet life in an idyllic village. He is a brilliant and deeply emotional man, devoted to his wife and children. Darwin is especially fond of his eldest daughter Anne Darwin, a precocious and inquisitive ten-year-old. He teaches her much about nature and science, including Darwin's theory of evolution evolution, and tells her stories of his travels. Her favourite story, despite the sad ending, is about the young orangutan Jenny, who is brought from Borneo to the London Zoo, where she finally died of pneumonia in the arms of her keeper. Darwin is furious when he learns that the family clergyman has made Annie kneel on Halite as punishment for contradicting him about dinosaurs, which she takes as having become extinct long ago. This contradicts the church's position that life is unchanging and that the Earth is very young.