Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/82

 plete and original study on an imperfectly known and misinterpreted group of animals, was of importance, inasmuch as it may be said to have completed Darwin's education as a naturalist. It gave him an insight into taxonomy and morphology, which served him well in writing the 'Origin of Species,' and it taught him, as Mr. Huxley has said, to understand in this branch of knowledge what amount of speculative strain his facts would bear — an experience he had already gone through during the voyage of the Beagle in the case of geology. Nevertheless Darwin was, in later life, inclined to doubt whether it was worth so much time as he gave to it, And during at least the latter part of the eight years (1846-64) he certainly grew very weary of the subject.

It was during the early years at Down that his acquaintance with Sir Joseph (then Dr.) Hooker grew into intimacy, it became the chief friendship of his life, and has given us a rich store of letters which illustrate Daiwin's life more fully than any other series of letters. During part of the period 1842-1854 he suffered more from ill-health than at any other time of his life, and he was thus, in 1849, driven to make a trial of hydro- pathy. He visited more than once the water-cure establishment of Dr. Gully at Malvern, and in later years was often a patient of Dr. Lane at Moor Park. Besides the visits to Malvern, we hear of other short absences from Down. Thus, in 1845, he took a short tour, in which he visited a farm which he owned in Lincolnshire, and paid visits to Dean Herbert, the horticulturist, and to Waterton at Walton Hall. In the following years, 1846 and 1847, he attended the meetings of the British Association at Southampton and Oxford. He was again at the Birmingham meeting in 1849, and this (with the exception of Glasgow in 1855) was, we believe, the last meeting of the Association at which he was present. He was now gradually settling down into the permanent custom of his life, namely, to work until he was threatened with a complete breakdown, and then to take a holiday of the fewest possible number of days that would suffice to revive him. These visits were spent almost universally at the houses of relatives, except when the whole family removed for some time to a hired house.

Origin of Species. — In considering the history of the ' Origin of Species ' we must go back to earlier years. The first rough sketch of his theory was written out in 35 pages in 1842, and this was enlarged in 1844 to a fuller sketch of 230 pages. Evidence of his early views can be gathered from his previous writing. The following passage from the manuscnpt journal made during the voyage shows that in 1834 his views on species were sufficiently orthodox. Writing at Valparaiso, he says : ' I have already found beds of recent shells yet retaining their colour at an elevation of thirteen hundred feet, and beneath the level country is strewn with them. It seems not a very improbable conjecture that the want of animals may be owing to none having been created since this country was raised from the sea.' The following passage was written in January 1836, near the end of the voyage, and is reproduced in the first edition of 'Tne Voyage of the Beagle,' p. 526.

After describing the omithorhynchus playing in the water like a water rat, he goes on : 'A little time before this I had been lying on a sunny bank and was reflecting on the strange character of the animals of this country as compared with the rest of the world. All unbeliever in everything beyond his own reason might exclaim : Two distinct creators must have been at work ; their object, however, has been the same, and certainly the end in each case is complete. While thus thinking, I observed the noUow conical pitfall of the lion-ant.... There can be no doubt that this predacious larva belongs to the same genus with the European kind, though to a different species. Now, what would the sceptic say to this? Would any two workmen ever have hit on so beautiful, so simple, and yet so artificial a contrivance? It cannot be thought so. One Hand has surely worked throughout the universe.' In the manuscript journal the passage is continued: 'A geologist, perhaps, would suggest that the periods of creation have been distinct or remote the one from the other; that the Creator rested in his labour.' The passage quoted from the first edition does not occur in the 'Journal' of 1845, a fact which may be significant of the change which had come over Darwin's way of regarding nature during the interval 1837—45. He records that as early as March 1836 he had been much struck by the character of the American fossils and of the Galapagos species. His first note-book was opened in July 1837, so that the first edition of the ' Journal ' was written only a few months after he had been to formulate his belief in evolution, while the second edition was published after an interval of eight years. He has recorded the fact that he did not see his way clearly until after he had read 'Malthus on Population' in 1838, i.e. between the first and second editions of the 'Journal,' and this, no doubt, helps to account for the stronger tinge of evolution in the second edition. But even in the latter we have a passage in which he wonders that certain animals which 'play