412 GROWTH OF THE * ORIGIN.' [1855. 



N 



My father was fond of quoting this passage, and always 

 with a tone of fellow-feeling for the author, though, no doubt, 

 he had forgotten his own wonderings as a child that '' every 

 gentleman did not become an ornithologist." — ('Autobiogra- 

 phy,' p. 32.) 



To Mr. W. B. Te<^etmeier, the well-known writer on poul- 

 try, &c., he was indebted for constant advice and co-opera- 

 tion. Their correspondence began in 1855, and lasted to 

 1881, when my father wrote : "I can assure you that I often 

 look back with pleasure to the old days when I attended to 

 pigeons, fowls, &c., and when you gave me such valuable as- 

 sistance. I not rarely regret that I have had so little strength 

 that I have not been able to keep up old acquaintances and 

 friendships." My fathers's letters to Mr. Tegetmeier consist 

 almost entirely of series of questions relating to the different 

 breeds of fowls, pigeons, &c., and are not, therefore, interest- 

 ing. In reading through the pile of letters, one is much 

 struck by the diligence of the writer's search for facts, and it 

 is made clear that Mr. Tegetmeier's knowledge and judgment 

 were completely trusted and highly valued by him. Numer- 

 ous phrases, such as '' your note is a mine of wealth to me," 

 occur, expressing his sense of the value of Mr. Tegetmeier's 

 help, as well as words expressing his warm appreciation of 

 Mr. Tegetmeier's unstinting zeal and kindness, or his " pure 

 and disinterested love of science." On the subject of hive- 

 bees and their combs, Mr. Tegetmeier's help was also valued 

 by my father, who wrote, "your paper on ^Bees-cells,' read 

 before the British Association, was highly useful and suggest- 

 tive to me." 



To. work out the problems on the Geographical Distribu- 

 tions of animals and plants on evolutionary principles, he had 

 to study the means by which seeds, eggs, &c., can be trans- 

 ported across wide spaces of ocean. It was this need which 

 gave an interest to the class of experiment to which the fol- 

 lowing letters allude.] 



