150 LONDON AND CAMBRIDGE. [ch. vil 



seems willing to work at them. I also heard that Mr. 

 Broderip would be glad to look over the South American 

 shells, so that things nourish well with me." 



Again, on November 6 : 



" All my affairs, indeed, are most prosperous ; I find 

 there are plenty who will undertake the description of 

 whole tribes of animals, of which I know nothing." 



As to his Geological Collection he was soon able to write : 

 " I [have] disposed of the most important part [of] my col- 

 lections, by giving all the fossil bones to the College of Sur- 

 geons, casts of them will be distributed, and descriptions 

 published. They are very curious and valuable ; one head 

 belonged to some gnawing animal, but of the size of a Hip- 

 popotamus ! Another to an ant-eater of the size of a 

 horse ! " 



My father's specimens included (besides the above-men- 

 tioned Toxodon and Scelidotherium) the remains of Mylo- 

 don, Glossotherium, another gigantic animal allied to the 

 ant-eater, and Macrauchenia. His discovery of these remains 

 is a matter of interest in itself, but it has a special impor- 

 tance as a point in his own life, his speculation on the ex- 

 tinction of these extraordinary creatures * and on their rela- 

 tionship to living forms having formed one of the chief 

 starting-points of his views on the origin of species. This 

 is shown in the following extract from his Pocket Book 

 for this year (1837): "In July opened first note-book 

 on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck 

 from about the month of previous March on character 

 of South American fossils, and species on Galapagos 

 Arhipelago. These facts (especially latter), origin of all 

 my views." 



His affairs being thus far so prosperously managed he 

 was able to put into execution his plan of living at Cam- 

 bridge, where he settled on December 10th, 1836. 



" Cambridge," he writes, " yet continues a very pleasant 

 but not half so merry a place as before. To walk through 

 the courts of Christ's College, and not know an inhabitant 

 of a single room, gave one a feeling half melancholy. The 

 only evil I found in Cambridge was its being too pleasant : 

 there was some agreeable party or another every evening, 



* 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. 



