would explain; and he was too busy to concern himself with immediate opinion. He was seeking for truth, and was satisfied that if he could establish it his own reputation made little difference. In fact, the fame that came to him in the midst of his work was a genuine surprise, something that never was a part of his ambition and that he regarded as probably a temporary flurry that would soon blow over.

This great simplicity of character and transparent honesty was one of Darwin's charms. With a mind always open to the truth from whatever source it came, he was the first and keenest critic of his own conclusions, more anxious than any one to have them overthrown if they could be proved to be contrary to the facts. It is little wonder that his scientific colleagues came to love and trust him, and before his death he received in full measure the expression of their

esteem.

Darwin was born at Shrewsbury, England, February 12, 1809; and was named Charles Robert Darwin, although the middle name does not appear on the title pages of his books. His grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was one of the most notable and original men of his age; and his father, who was a physician, was a man of marked character and ability. We know little of Darwin until he entered Edinburgh University, having had his preparatory course at the Shrewsbury Grammar School. He seems to have made no very brilliant record at Edinburgh, and certainly did not discover himself. It was when he went to Cambridge University, and came under the influence of Professor Henslow, professor of botany, that he was stimulated and developed. Darwin's description of Professor Henslow shows him to have been a worthy teacher of a worthy pupil, a man singularly apt to teach, capable of understanding and directing the tastes of his pupils.

It was at Cambridge that Darwin determined his life. work, and his interest in natural history was so marked that Professor Henslow offered him the opportunity of a voyage around the world in the Beagle, a ship whose name has become very famous in science. In 1831. the expedition started,

with a young naturalist on board, twenty-two years of age, destined to revolutionize scientific thought.

The voyage lasted nearly five years, and this extended survey of plants and animals and human beings opened to Darwin's mind the problems of his life and suggested their solution. He returned to England convinced that the plants and animals of today are the modified descendants of earlier forms, and that he had a clue to an explanation of the changes. It was characteristic of Darwin that these ideas were elaborated for more than twenty years before he published them. As Dr. Asa Gray has said in his charming book entitled "Darwiniana :"

Offering fruit so well ripened on the bough; commending the conclusions he had so thoroughly matured by the presentation of very various lines of facts, and of reasonings close to the facts, it is not so surprising that his own convictions should at the close of the next twenty years be generally shared by scientific men.

After this long voyage, from the effects of which Darwin became an invalid for the remainder of his life, he married and settled down to a very quiet life in the little hamlet of Down, in Kent, "in a plain but comfortable house, in a few acres of pleasure ground, a pleasantly old-fashioned air about it, with a sense of peace and silence."

It is interesting to note the evolution of his own tastes as recorded in his "Life" in the following passage:

Up to the age of about thirty all kinds of poetry-the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley-afforded me lively pleasure. Shakespeare was my delight, principally his historical plays, when I was a schoolboy. Painting also, and above all music, gave me agreeable sensations. Now, and for some years past, I cannot endure reading a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and have found him so boring that he disgusted me. I have also lost my taste for painting and music. Music generally made me think strongly upon the subject of my work instead of giving me the pleasure of relief. I have still some taste for beautiful scenery, but the sight of it does not any longer give me the exquisite pleasure which I once found in it. On the other hand, novels which are works of imagination,

even those that have nothing remarkable about them, have for some years afforded me prodigious relaxation and pleasure, and I often bless the race of novelists. A large number of novels have been read aloud to me, and I love them all, even if they are only middling, especially if they end well. A law ought to be passed forbidding them to end badly.

Soon after Darwin's return from his voyage around the world, there appeared his book entitled "Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the countries Visited during the Voyage of the Beagle." The title is voluminous, as was the custom at that time, but this is one of the most entertaining books of travel ever written. The narrative has even been put in simple language as a book for children. In his early years Darwin was full of enthusiasm for the beauties of Nature, and his descriptions were in a style far removed from the ordinary conception of the style of an unemotional, technical scientific man. A good example is the following taken from his description of Bahia:

When quietly walking along the shady pathways and admiring each successive view, I wished to find language to express my ideas. Epithet after epithet was found too weak to convey to those who have not visited the intertropical regions the sensation of delight which the mind experiences. I have said that the plants in a hothouse fail to communicate a just idea of the vegetation, yet I must recur to it. The land is one great, wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse, made by Nature for herself, but taken possession of by man, who has studded it with gay houses and formal gardens. How great would be the desire in every admirer of nature to behold, if such were possible, the scenery of another planet! Yet to every person in Europe it may be truly said that at the distance of only a few degrees from his native soil the glories of another world are opened to him. In my last walk I stopped again and again to gaze on these beauties, and endeavored to fix in my mind forever an impression which at the time I knew sooner or later must fail. The form of the orange tree, the cocoanut, the palm, the mango, the tree fern, the banana, will remain clear and separate; but the thousand beauties which unite these into one perfect scene must fade away; yet they will leave, like a tale heard in childhood, a picture full of indistinct but most beautiful figures.

The first formal announcement of Darwin's doctrine of

"Natural Selection" was attended by a remarkable circumstance. He had sketched his doctrine as early as 1839, and between that time and its announcement had shown it to a few scientific friends who were made familiar with it. In 1857, he received from Alfred Wallace, then traveling in the Malay Archipelago, a letter enclosing a strikingly similar paper on the same subject, and requesting Darwin to have it read before the Linnean Society. Darwin's action was very characteristic, for he proposed to have this rival paper published at once, in advance of his own. That he had a similar paper of his own so long in preparation was known only to a few; but these few insisted that his paper should appear along with that of Wallace. So upon the same day, June 1, 1858, there were read in the Linnean Society of London two papers from the opposite quarters of the globe, both advocating the same theory. Wallace was as generous as Darwin, for when he learned of the circumstance he urged Darwin to go forward, while he retired into the background.

It was in 1859 that the theory appeared fully presented in book form, under the title "Origin of Species." As some one has said, "it was like a firebrand thrown into a mass of inflammable material. It ran through editions of thousands in a few months. Advocates and opponents sprang up on all sides. Invectives and praises were showered upon the author from all quarters." Since Darwin's greatest fame rests upon this book, it is necessary to know what it teaches that could so startle the world.

The "Origin of Species" is nothing more than a formal statement of the theory which Darwin called "Natural Selection," but which is commonly called "Darwinism." Darwin did not originate the theory of evolution, as many persist in thinking; he simply explained how it was made possible by his theory of natural selection. The doctrine of evolution is as old as the record of human thought, and many philosophers and scientists, before Darwin and after him, have sought to formulate an explanation of it. They were all convinced that evolution is a fact, and they all tried to explain it.

It happened that Darwin's explanation attracted more popular attention than any that had preceded it, and this was a source of amused wonder to him. A brief statement of the theory of natural selection is as follows:

All believers in evolution urged that species of plants and animals are not permanent, dating from some specific act of creation and continuing unchanged indefinitely or until extinction. They believed that species begat species, as individuals begat individuals. Darwin's explanation of this may be given in the order in which it developed in his mind.

First he was impressed by the fact of the enormous overproduction of living forms. If a plant produces fifty seeds, and these fifty seeds produce fifty plants, each of which produces fifty seeds, and so on, in a few years the earth would be crowded full of this one kind of plant. In other words, the ratio of increase is immensely greater than any possible expression of it; and if it did express itself in connection with the many thousands of different kinds of plants and animals in existence, the result would be appalling. Darwin concluded that a fierce struggle for existence is going on among all organisms, a struggle for support, for standing room. Destruction must be the rule, and life the exception; for a very small fraction of the forms produced can live. In considering the "struggle for existence," Darwin very naturally inquired into the meaning of this enormous waste of life. What forms survive? Evidently those that are the best suited to their surroundings. If the seeds from one plant be germinated under the same conditions, the young plantlets will not be all alike, and a certain number of them will perish. Why? Some are better suited to their surroundings than others and survive. If they are better in any respect than their fellows, they must differ from them, and the range of this difference or variation within the limits of a single species is often very great.

Then came in the law of inheritance, which secures the propagation of these more favorable characters, and the beginning of a favored race. The variation begun increases