ch. viii.] 1842-1854. 161 



The house stands a quarter of a mile from the village, 

 and is built, like so many houses of the last century, as near 

 as possible to the road a narrow lane winding away to the 

 Westerham high-road. In 1842, it was dull and unattract- 

 ive enough : a square brick building of three storeys, 

 covered with shabby whitewash, and hanging tiles. The 

 garden had none of the shrubberies or walls that now give 

 shelter ; it w r as overlooked from the lane, and w 7 as open, 

 bleak, and desolate. One of my father's first undertakings 

 was to lower the lane by about two feet, and to build a flint 

 wall along that part of it which bordered the garden. The 

 earth thus excavated was used in making banks and mounds 

 round the lawn : these were planted with evergreens, which 

 now T give to the garden its retired and sheltered character. 



The house was made to look neater by being covered 

 with stucco, but the chief improvement effected was the 

 building of a large bow extending up through three storeys. 

 This bow became covered with a tangle of creepers, and 

 pleasantly varied the south side of the house. The drawing- 

 room, with its verandah opening into the garden, as well as 

 the study in which my father worked during the later years 

 of his life, were added at subsequent dates. 



Eighteen acres of land were sold with the house, of which 

 twelve acres on the south side of the house form a pleasant 

 field, scattered with fair-sized oaks and ashes. From this 

 field a strip was cut off and converted into a kitchen garden 

 in which the experimental plot of ground was situated, and 

 where the greenhouses were ultimately put up. 



During the whole of 1843 he was occupied with geologi- 

 cal work, the result of which was published in the spring of 

 the following year. It was entitled Geological Observations 

 on the Volcanic Islands, visited during the Voyage of 

 H.M.8. Beagle, together with so?ne brief notices on the geol- 

 ogy of Australia and the Cape of Good Hope ; it formed 

 the second part of the Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle, 

 published " with the Approval of the Lords Commissioners 

 of Her Majesty's Treasury." The volume on Coral Reefs 

 forms Part I. of the series, and was published, as we have 

 seen, in 1842. For the sake of the non-geological reader, I 

 may here quote Sir A. Geikie's words * on these two volumes 

 which were up to this time my father's chief geological 

 works. Speaking of the Coral Reefs, he says (p. 17) : "This 



* Charles Darwin, JS'ature Series, 1882. 



