ch. vii.] 1836-1842. 151 



and one cannot say one is engaged with so much impunity 

 there as in this great city." * 



Early in the spring of 1837 he left Cambridge for Lon- 

 don, and a week later he was settled in lodgings at 36 Great 

 Marlborough. Street ; and except for a " short visit to 

 Shrewsbury " in June, he worked on till September, being 

 almost entirely employed on his Journal, of which he wrote 

 (March) : 



" In your last letter you urge me to get ready the book. 

 I am now hard at work and give up everything else for it. 

 Our plan is as follows: Capt. Fitz-Koy writes two volumes 

 out of the materials collected during the last voyage under 

 Capt. King to Tierra del Fuego, and during our circum- 

 navigation. I am to have the third volume, in which I in- 

 tend giving a kind of journal of a naturalist, not following, 

 however, always the order of time, but rather the order of 

 position." 



A letter to Fox (July) gives an account of the progress 

 of his work : 



" I gave myself a holiday and a visit to Shrewsbury [in 

 June], as I had finished my Journal. I shall now be very 

 busy in filling up gaps and getting it quite ready for the 

 press by the first of August. I shall always feel respect for 

 every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for 

 I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common 

 English could cost one. And, alas, there yet remains the 

 worst part of all, correcting the press. As soon as ever that 

 is done I must put my shoulder to the wheel and commence 

 at the Geology. I have read some short papers to the 

 Geological Society, and they were favourably received by the 

 great guns, and this gives me much confidence, and I hope 

 not a very great deal of vanity, though I confess I feel too 

 often like a peacock admiring his tail. I never expected 

 that my Geology would ever have been worth the consid- 



* A trifling record of ray father's presence in Cambridge occurs in the book 

 kept in Christ's College Combination-room, in which fines and bets are re- 

 corded, 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 dis- 

 cussion (and a bottle) to the Room, hence the x in the above quotation. 

 11 



