from becoming a pupil of Sedgwick. It is curious to speculate on what might have been his ultimate bent had he then come under the spell of that eloquent, enthusiastic, and most lovable man. Not improbably he would have become an ardent geologist, dedicating more exclusively to that science the genius and industry which he devoted to biology and to natural history as a whole. Some of the incidents of his Cambridge life which he records are full of interest in their bearing on his future career. Foremost among them stands the friendship which he formed with Professor Henslow, whose lectures on botany he attended. He joined in the class excursions, and found them delightful. But still more profitable to him were the long and almost daily walks which he enjoyed with his teacher during the latter half of his time at Cambridge. Henslow's wide range of acquirement, modesty, unselfishness, courtesy, gentleness, and piety, fascinated him, and exerted on him an influence which, more than anything else, tended to shape his whole future life. The love of travel, which had been kindled by his boyish reading, now took a deeper hold of him as he read Humboldt's "Personal Narrative," and Herschel's "Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy." He determined to visit Teneriffe, and even went so far as to inquire about ships. But his desire was soon to be gratified in a far other and more comprehensive voyage. At the close of his college life he was fortunate enough, through Henslow's good offices, to accompany Sedgwick in a geological excursion in North Wales. There can be little doubt that this short trip sufficed to efface the dislike of geology which he had conceived at Edinburgh, and to show him how much it was in his own power to increase the sum of geological knowledge. To use his own phrase, he began to "work like a tiger" at geology. of becoming a clergyman, and his father's wish that he should do so, were never formally given up; but from this time onward they dropped out of sight. The Beagle weighed anchor from Plymouth on the 27th of December, 1831, and returned on the 2nd of October, 1836. Of the voyage in the Beagle and its scientific fruits Darwin himself has left ample record in his "Journal of Researches," and in the various memoirs on special branches of research which he afterwards published. The editor of the biography has wisely refrained from repeating the story of this important part of his father's life. But he has given a new charm to it by printing a few of the letters written during the voyage, which help us to realize still more vividly the life and work of the naturalist in his circumnavigation of the world. We can picture him in his little cabin working diligently at the structure of marine creatures, but driven every now and then to lie down as a relief from the seasickness which worried him during the voyage, and was thought by some to have permanently injured his health. We see him littering the deck with his specimens, and thereby raising the indignation of the prim first lieutenant, who declared he would like to turn the naturalist and his mess "out of the place," but who, in spite of this want of sympathy, was rec ognized by Darwin as a "glorious fellow." We watch him in the tropical forests and in the calm glories of the tropical nights with the young officers listening to his exposition of the wonders of nature around them. And, above all, we mark his exuberant enthusiasm in the new aspects of the world that came before him, his gentleness, unfailing good-nature and courtesy, that endeared him alike to every officer and sailor in the ship. The officers playfully dubbed him their "dear old philosopher," and the men called him "our flycatcher." But he now had reached the main turn- For one who was to take a foremost ing-point of his career. On returning place among the naturalists of all timehome from his ramble with Sedgwick he that is, in the true old sense of the word found a letter from Henslow, telling him naturalist, men with sympathies and inthat Captain Fitz-Roy, who was about to sight of every department of nature, and start on the memorable voyage of the not mere specialists working laboriously in Beagle, was willing to give up part of his their own limited field of research - there own cabin to any competent young man could hardly have been chosen a more who would volunteer to go with him with-instructive and stimulating journey than out pay as naturalist. The post was that which was provided for Darwin by offered to Darwin, and after some natural the voyage of the Beagle. The route lay objections on the part of his father, who by the Cape de Verd Islands across the thought that such a wild scheme would be Atlantic to the coast of Brazil, southward disreputable to his character as a future to the Strait of Magellan, and up the westclergyman, was accepted. His intentionern side of the South American continent as far as Callao. It then struck westward | interesting is the history of the earth. across the Pacific Ocean by the Galapagos Writing to his friend, W. D. Fox, from archipelago, Taheiti, New Zealand, Syd- Lima, in the summer of 1835, he expresses ney and Tasmania, turning round into the his pleasure in hearing that his corresponIndian Ocean by way of Keeling Islands dent had some intention of studying geoland the Mauritius to the Cape of Good ogy; which, he says, offers "so much Hope, and then by St. Helena and Ascen- larger a field of thought than the other sion Island to the coast of Brazil, where branches of natural history;" and, morethe chronometrical measurement of the over, "is a capital science to begin, as it world, which was the ostensible object of requires nothing but a little reading, thinkthe Beagle's circumnavigation, was to be ing, and hammering." While the whole completed, and so once more across the of his journal shows on every page how Atlantic homewards. Almost every as keen were his powers of observation, and pect of nature was encountered in such a how constantly he was on the watch for journey. The luxuriant forests of the new facts in many fields of natural knowltropics, the glaciers and snowfields of edge, it is to the geological problems that Tierra del Fuego, the arid wastes of Pata- he returns most frequently and fully. And gonia, the green and fertile pampas, the never before in the history of science had volcanic islets of mid-ocean, the lofty Cor- these problems been attacked by an actual dillera of a great continent, arose one by observer over so vast a space of the earth's one before the eager gaze of the young surface, with more acuteness and patience, observer. Each scene widened his expe- or discussed with such breadth of view. rience of the outer aspects of the world, There is something almost ludicrous in quickened his powers of observation, the contrast between his method of treatdeepened his sympathy with nature as a ment of volcanic phenomena and that of whole, and likewise supplied him with his professor at Edinburgh only six short abundant materials for future study in the years before. But though geological life-work which he had now definitely set questions, being the most obvious and before himself. We must think of him approachable, took up so large a share of during those five momentous years as pa- his time and attention, he was already tiently accumulating the facts and shaping pondering on some of the great biological in his mind the problems which were to mysteries the unveiling of which in later furnish the occupation of all his after life. years was to be his main occupation, and During the voyage he had written long to form the basis on which his renown as letters to his friends descriptive of what an investigator was chiefly to rest. he had seen and done. He likewise forwarded considerable collections of specimens gathered by him at various places. His scientific activity was therefore well known to his acquaintances, and even to a wider circle at home, for some of his letters to Henslow were privately printed and circulated among the members of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. It would have been difficult for any even of his most intimate friends to offer a plausible conjecture as to the line of inquiry in natural science that he would ultimately select as the one along which he more particularly desired to advance. An onlooker might have naturally believed that the ardent young observer would choose geology, and end by becoming one of the foremost leaders in that department of science. In his "Journal of Researches," and in the letters from the Beagle just published, it is remarkable how much he shows the fascination that geology now had for him. He had thoroughly thrown off the incubus of Wernerianism. From Lyell's book and Sedgwick's personal influence he had discovered how absorbingly On his return to England, in October, 1836, Darwin at once took his place among the acknowledged men of science of his country. For a time his health continued to be such as to allow him to get through a large amount of work. The next two years, which in his own opinion were the most active of his life, were spent, partly at Cambridge and partly in London, in the preparation of his "Journal of Researches," of the zoological and geological results of the voyage, and of various pa pers for the geological and zoological societies. So keen was his geological zeal that, almost against his better judg ment, he was prevailed upon to undertake the duties of honorary secretary of the Geological Society, an office which he continued to hold for three years. And at each period of enforced holiday, for his health had already begun to give way, he occupied himself with geological work in the field. In the midlands he watched the operations of earth-worms, and began those inquiries which formed the subject of his last research, and of the volume on "Vegetable Mould" which he published not long before his death. In the High- the upward growth of the reef-building lands he studied the famous Parallel corals round an island slowly sinking into Roads of Glen Roy; and his work there, the sea. He was thus led to look upon though in after years he acknowledged it to be "a great failure,” he felt at the time to have been "one of the most difficult and instructive tasks" he had ever undertaken. In the beginning of 1839 Darwin married his cousin, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, and granddaughter of the founder of the Etruria Works, and took a house in London. But the entries of ill-health in his diary grow more frequent. For a time he and his wife went into society, and took their share of the scientific life and work of the metropolis. But he was compelled gradually to withdraw from this kind of existence which suited neither of them, and eventually they determined to live in the country. Accordingly he purchased a house and grounds at Down in a sequestered part of Kent, some twenty miles from London, and moved thither in the autumn of 1842. In that quiet home he passed the remaining forty years of his life. It was there that his children were born and grew up around him, that he carried on the researches and worked out the generalizations that have changed the whole realm of science, that he received his friends and the strangers who came from every country to see him; and it was there that, after a long and laborious life, full of ardor and work to the last, he died at the age of seventy-three, on the 19th of April, 1882. the vast regions of ocean dotted with coral islands as areas of gradual subsidence, and he could adduce every stage in the process of growth, from the shore-reef just beginning, as it were, to form round the island, to the completed atoll, where the last vestige of the encircled land had disappeared under the central lagoon. More recent researches by other observers have, in the opinion of some writers, proved that the widespread submergence demanded by Darwin's theory is not required to account for the present form and distribution of coral islands. But his work will ever remain a classic in the history of geology. After working up the geological results of the long voyage in the Beagle, he set himself with great determination to more purely zoological details. While on the coast of Chili he had found a curious new cirripede, to understand the structure of which he had to examine and dissect many of the common forms. The memoir, which was originally designed to describe only his new type, gradually expanded into an elaborate monograph on the cir ripedes (barnacles) as a whole group. For eight years he continued this self-imposed task, getting at last so weary of it as to feel at times as if the labor had been in some sense wasted which he had spent over it, and this suspicion seems to have remained with him in maturer years. But when at last the two bulky volumes, of more than one thousand pages of text, with forty detailed plates, made their ap ble contribution to the knowledge of a comparatively little known department of the animal kingdom. In the interests of science, perhaps, their chief value is to be recognized not so much in their own high merit as in the practical training which their preparation gave the author in anatomical detail and classification. He spoke of it himself afterwards as a valuable discipline, and Professor Huxley truly affirms that the influence of this discipline was visible in everything which he afterwards wrote. The story of his life at Down is almost wholly coincident with the history of the development of his views on evolution, and the growth and appearance of the suc-pearance, they were hailed as an admiracessive volumes which he gave to the world. For the first four years his geological tastes continued in the ascendant. During that interval there appeared three remarkable works, his volume on "Coral Islands," that on "Volcanic Islands," and his "Geological Observations on South America." Of these treatises that on coral reefs excited the wonder and admiration of geologists for the simplicity and grandeur of its theoretical explanations. Before it was written, the prevalent view of the origin of these insular masses of coral was that which regarded each of them as built on the summit of a volcano, the circular shape of an atoll or ring of coral being held to mark the outline of the submerged crater on which it rested. But Darwin, in showing the untenableness of this explanation, pointed out how easily the rings of coral might have arisen from It was after Darwin had got rid of his herculean labors over the cirripede book" that he began to settle down seriously to the great work of his life - the investigation of the origin of the species of plants and animals. One of the three volumes of the biography is entirely devoted to tracing the growth of his views on this subject, and the preparation and reception of the great work on the "Origin of Species. In no part of his task has the editor shown greater tact and skill than in this. From the earliest jottings, which show that the idea had taken hold of Darwin's mind, we are led onwards through successive journals, letters, and published works, marking as we go how steadily the idea was pursued, and how it shaped itself more and more definitely in his mind. It is impossible to condense this story within the limits of a review article, and the condensation, even if possible, would spoil the story, which must be left as told in the author's own words. Briefly, it may be stated here that he seems to have been first led to ponder over the question of the transmutation of species by facts that had come under his notice during the South American part of the voyage in the Beagle-such as the discovery of the fossil remains of huge animals akin to, but yet very distinct from, the living armadillos of the same regions; the manner in which closely allied animals were found to replace one another, as he followed them over the continent; and the remarkable character of the flora and fauna of the Galapagos archipelago. "It was evident," he says, "that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me." His first note-book for the accumulation of facts bearing on the question was opened in July, 1837, and from that date he continued to gather them "on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading." He soon perceived that selection was the secret of success in the artificial production of the useful varieties of plants and animals. But how this principle, so fertile in results when employed by man, could be applied in explanation of nature's operations, remained a mystery to him until in October, 1838, when, happening to read for amusement Malthus's book"On the Principle of Population," he found at last a theory with which to work. With this guiding principle he instituted a laborious investigation on the breeding of pigeons, and experiments on the flotation of eggs, the vitality of seeds, and other questions, the solution of which seemed desirable as his researches advanced. He says himself that, to avoid prejudice in favor of his own views, he refrained for some time from writing even the briefest sketch of the theory he had formed, and that it was not until June, 1842, that he allowed himself the satisfaction of writing a very brief pencil abstract in thirty-five pages, which two years afterwards he enlarged to two hundred and thirty pages, and had fairly copied out. This precious manuscript was the germ of the "Origin of Species." With characteristic caution, however, he kept his essay in his desk, and with equally characteristic ardor, industry, and patience went on with the laborious task of accumulating evidence. His friends were of course well aware of the nature of his research and of the remarkable views to which he had been led regarding the history of species. And as these views could hardly fail in the end to become generally known, it was desirable that the first publication of them should be made by himself. This having been urged upon him by Lyell, he began early in the year 1856 to write out his views in detail on a scale three or four times as large as that on which the "Origin of Species " afterwards appeared. This work he continued steadily for two years, when it was interrupted (June, 1858) by the arrival of a remarkable manuscript essay by Mr. A. R. Wallace, who, working in the Malay Archipelago, had arrived at conclusions identical with those of Darwin himself. Darwin's generous impulse was to send this essay for publication irrespective of any claim of his own to priority; but his friends, Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker, persuaded him to allow extracts from his early sketch of 1844, and part of a letter written to Professor Asa Gray in 1857, to be read, together with Mr. Wallace's contribution, before the Linnean Society, and to be reprinted in the Society's Journal. He now set to work upon that epitome of his observations and deductions which appeared in November, 1859, as the immortal "Origin of Species." Those who are old enough to remember the publication of this work, cannot but marvel at the change which, since that day, not yet thirty years ago, has come alike upon the non-scientific and the scientific part of the community in their estimation of it. Professor Huxley has furnished to the biography a graphic chapter on the reception of the book, and in his vigorous and witty style recalls the furious and fatuous objections that were urged against it. A much longer chapter will be required to describe the change which the advent of the "Origin of Species" has wrought in every department of science, and not of science only, but of | Life," in which the man as he lived and philosophy. The principle of evolution, worked is vividly pictured. From that so early broached and so long discredited, sketch, and from Darwin's own letters, has now at last been proclaimed and ac- the reader may conceive how noble was cepted as the guiding idea in the investi- the character of the great naturalist. His gation of nature. industry and patience, in spite of the daily One of the most marvellous aspects of physical suffering that marked the last Darwin's work was the way in which he forty years of his life; his utter unselfishseemed always to throw a new light upon ness and tender consideration for others; every department of inquiry into which his lifelong modesty that led him to see the course of his researches led him to the worst of his own work and the best of look. The specialists who, in their own that of other men; his scrupulous honor narrow domains, had been toiling for and unbending veracity; his intense deyears, patiently gathering facts and tim-sire to be accurate even in the smallest idly drawing inferences from them, were particulars, and the trouble he took to seastonished to find that one who, to their eyes, was a kind of outsider, could point out to them the plain meaning of things which, though entirely familiar to them, they had never adequately understood. The central idea of the "Origin of Species" is an example of this in the biological sciences. The chapter on the imperfection of the geological record is another. cure such accuracy; his sympathy with the struggles of younger men, and his readiness to help them; his eagerness for the establishment of truth by whomsoever discovered; his interest up to the very last in the advancement of science; his playful humor; his unfailing courtesy and gratitude for even the smallest acts of kindness, these elements of a lofty moral nature stand out conspicuously in the biography. No one can rise from the perusal of these volumes without the conviction that, by making known to the world at large what Darwin was as a man, as well as a great original investigator, they place him on a still loftier pinnacle of greatness than that to which the voice of his contemporaries had already raised him. After the publication of the "Origin," Darwin gave to the world during a succession of years a series of volumes, in which some of his observations and conclusions were worked out in fuller detail. His books on the fertilization of orchids, on the movements and habits of climbing plants, on the variation of animals and plants under domestication, on the effects of cross and self fertilization in the vegetable kingdom, on the different forms of flowers on plants of the same species, were mainly based on his own quiet work in the greenhouse and garden at Down. His volumes on the descent of man, and on the expression of the emotions in man and animals, completed his contributions to BY JOHN STRANGE WINTER, AUTHOR OF the biological argument. His last volume, published the year before his death, treated of the formation of vegetable mould, and the habits of earth-worms, and the preparation of it enabled him to revive some of the geological enthusiasm which so marked the earlier years of his life. Such, in briefest outline, was the work accomplished by Charles Darwin. The admirable biography prepared by his son enables us to follow its progress from the beginning to the close. But higher even than the intellect which achieved the work was the moral character which shone through it all. As far as it is possible for words to convey what Darwin was to those who did not personally know him, this has been done in the life. His son has written a touching chapter, entitled, "Reminiscences of my Father's Everyday ARCH. GEIKIE. From The English Illustrated Magazine. "BOOTLE'S BABY,' 99 66 A SIEGE BABY," ETC. CHAPTER I. It was a blazing June day. Aldershot, beloved of soldiers of all ranks, wore its usual summer air of blasé dejection, as if life was too much for it and it was weary of everything-itself most of all. Sand and metaphorical thorns were everywhere. Horses steamed in their stables and men groaned in their quarters, while those who were on duty not only groaned but likewise "cussed" vigorously. However, in the officers' quarters of the Cavalry Barracks about five o'clock on this particular afternoon, an evidence of a contented mind and cheerful bearing made itself apparent, for a loud and especially joyous whistling came from one of the officers' rooms. |