ch. vin.] 18421854. 165 



" Alas ! you have got some one in England whom you do 

 not read young Darwin, who went with the expedition to 

 the Straits of Magellan. He has succeeded far better than 

 myself with the subject I took up. There are admirable 

 descriptions of tropical nature in his journal, which you do 

 not read because the author is a zoologist, which you imagine 

 to be synonymous with bore. Mr. Darwin has another 

 merit, a very rare one in your country he has praised me." 



October I846 to October 185 J^. 



The time between October 1846, and October 1854, was 

 practically given up to working at the Cirripedia (Barnacles); 

 the results were published in two volumes by the Ray Society 

 in 1851 and 1854. His volumes on the Fossil Cirripedes 

 were published by the Palseontographical Society in 1851 

 and 1854. 



Writing to Sir J. D. Hooker in 1845, my father says : 

 " I hope this next summer to finish my South American Ge- 

 ology,* then to get out a little Zoology, and hurrah for my 

 species work. . . ." This passage serves to show that he 

 had at this time no intention of making an exhaustive study 

 of the Cirripedes. Indeed it would seem that his original 

 intention was, as I learn from Sir J. D. Hooker, merely to 

 work out one special problem. This is quite in keeping 

 with the following passage in the Autobiography : " When 

 on the coast of Chile, I found a most curious form, which 

 burrowed into the shells of Concholepas, and which differed 

 so much from all other Cirripedes that I had to form a new 

 sub-order for its sole reception. ... To understand the 

 structure of my new Cirripede I had to examine and dissect 

 many of the common forms ; and this gradually led me on 

 to take up the whole group." In later years he seems to 

 have felt some doubt as to the value of these eight years of 

 work for instance when he wrote in his Autobiography 

 " My work was of considerable use to me, when I had to 

 discuss in the Origin of Species the principles of a natural 



* This refers to the third and last of his geological books, Geological Ob- 

 servation on South America, which was published in 1846. A sentence from 

 a letter of Dec. 11, 1860, may be quoted here " David Forbes has been care- 

 fully working the Geology of Chile, and as I value praise for accurate obser- 

 vation far higher than for any other quality, forgive (if you can) the insuffer- 

 able vanity of my copying the last sentence in his note : ' I regard your Mono- 

 graph on Chile as, without exception, one of the finest specimens of Geological 

 inquiry.' I feel inclined to strut like a turkey-cock ! " 



