108 ZOOLOGY 



under these circumstances favorable variations would 

 tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be de- 

 stroyed. The result of this would be the formation of 

 new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by 

 which to work ; but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice, 

 that I determined not for some time to write even the 

 briefest sketch of it." Even before reading Malthus, 

 he had dimly perceived the consequences of non-adapta- 

 tion to surroundings, but now the matter became rela- 

 tively clear and definite in his mind. In 1842 he wrote 

 a rather full but rough statement of his views, which he 

 did not attempt to publish. It was printed at the time 

 of the Darwin Celebration at Cambridge in 1909, and 

 in it we can see the foundations of The Origin of Species, 

 published seventeen years later, in 1859. 



Emma 9. In 1839 Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedg- 



wood. The union was in all respects a happy and fruit- 

 ful one. Mrs. Darwin, though not scientific, was a 

 person of quite unusual ability and character, and her 

 devotion to her husband is described by one of her sons : 

 'If the character of my father's working life is to be 

 understood, the conditions of ill health, under which he 

 worked, must be constantly borne in mind. No one, 

 indeed, except my mother, knows the full amount of 

 suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful 

 patience. For all the latter years of his life she never 

 left him for a night ; and her days were so planned that 

 all his resting hours might be shared with her. She 

 shielded him from every avoidable annoyance, and 

 omitted nothing that might save him trouble, or pre- 

 vent him from becoming overtired, or that might allevi- 

 ate the many discomforts of his ill health. I hesitate 

 to speak thus freely of a thing so sacred as the lifelong 

 devotion which prompted all this constant and tender 



