Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters

95

According to the Japan Weekly Mail, as quoted in Nature, March 8, 1888, the Beagle is in use as a training ship at Yokosuka, in Japan. Part of the old ship is, I am glad to think, in my possession, in the form of a box (which I owe to the kindness of Admiral Mellersh) made out of her main cross-tree.

96

The Museum of the Zoological Society, then at 33 Bruton Street. The collection was some years later broken up and dispersed.

97

William Lonsdale, b. 1794, d. 1871, was originally in the army, and served at the battles of Salamanca and Waterloo. After the war he left the service and gave himself up to science. He acted as assistant-secretary to the Geological Society from 1829-42, when he resigned, owing to ill-health.

98

T. Bell, F.R.S., formerly Professor of Zoology in King's College, London, and sometime secretary to the Royal Society. He afterwards described the reptiles for the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle.

99

I have often heard him speak of the despair with which he had to break off the projecting extremity of a huge, partly excavated bone, when the boat waiting for him would wait no longer.

100

A trifling record of my father's presence in Cambridge occurs in the book kept in Christ's College Combination-room, in which fines and bets are recorded, the earlier entries giving a curious impression of the after-dinner frame of mind of the Fellows. The bets are not allowed to be made in money, but are, like the fines, paid in wine. The bet which my father made and lost is thus recorded: —

"Feb. 23, 1837.– Mr. Darwin v. Mr. Baines, that the combination-room measures from the ceiling to the floor more than x feet.

    "1 Bottle paid same day."

The bets are usually recorded in such a way as not to preclude future speculation on a subject which has proved itself capable of supplying a discussion (and a bottle) to the Room, hence the x in the above quotation.

101

Spring Rice.

102

Phil. Trans., 1839, pp. 39-82.

103

Sir Archibald Geikie has been so good as to allow me to quote a passage from a letter addressed to me (Nov. 19, 1884): – "Had the idea of transient barriers of glacier-ice occurred to him, he would have found the difficulties vanish from the lake-theory which he opposed, and he would not have been unconsciously led to minimise the altogether overwhelming objections to the supposition that the terraces are of marine origin."

It may be added that the idea of the barriers being formed by glaciers could hardly have occurred to him, considering the state of knowledge at the time, and bearing in mind his want of opportunities of observing glacial action on a large scale.

104

In a letter of Sept. 13 he wrote: – "It will be a curious point to geologists hereafter to note how long a man's name will support a theory so completely exposed as that of De Beaumont has been by you; you say you 'begin to hope that the great principles there insisted on will stand the test of time.' Begin to hope: why, the possibility of a doubt has never crossed my mind for many a day. This may be very unphilosophical, but my geological salvation is staked on it."

105

At the meeting of the British Association.

106

Daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Maer, and grand-daughter of the founder of the Etruria Pottery Works.

107

July 1877.

108

I must not omit to mention a member of the household who accompanied him. This was his butler, Joseph Parslow, who remained in the family, a valued friend and servant, for forty years, and became, as Sir Joseph Hooker once remarked to me, "an integral part of the family, and felt to be such by all visitors at the house."

109

Charles Darwin, Nature Series, 1882.

110

To Sir John Herschel, May 24, 1837. Life of Sir Charles Lyell, vol. ii. p. 12.

111

He wrote to Herbert: – "I have long discovered that geologists never read each other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness, and that you do not form your opinions without undergoing labour of some kind. Geology is at present very oral, and what I here say is to a great extent quite true." And to Fitz-Roy, on the same subject, he wrote: "I have sent my South American Geology to Dover Street, and you will get it, no doubt, in the course of time. You do not know what you threaten when you propose to read it – it is purely geological. I said to my brother, 'You will of course read it,' and his answer was, 'Upon my life, I would sooner even buy it.'"

112

The first edition was published in 1839, as vol. iii. of the Voyages of the 'Adventure' and 'Beagle.'

113

No doubt proof-sheets.

114

Three Generations of Englishwomen, by Janet Ross (1888), vol. i. p. 195.

115

This refers to the third and last of his geological books, Geological Observation on South America, which was published in 1846. A sentence from a letter of Dec. 11, 1860, may be quoted here – "David Forbes has been carefully working the Geology of Chile, and as I value praise for accurate observation far higher than for any other quality, forgive (if you can) the insufferable vanity of my copying the last sentence in his note: 'I regard your Monograph on Chile as, without exception, one of the finest specimens of Geological inquiry.' I feel inclined to strut like a turkey-cock!"

116

An unfulfilled prophecy.

117

The late Sir C. Bunbury, well known as a palæobotanist.