76 CHARLES DARWIN. 



voyage was published as the Journal of Researches in 1839. 

 This was afterwards issued in separate form as A Naturalisfs 

 Voyage Roimd the Worlds Darwin's first pubUshed volume, a 

 work whose power to fascinate it is not easy to describe. It must 

 be diligently read to comprehend how entirely the reader yields 

 himself up to the spell of this power. 



Soon after Darwin's return he was elected Fellow of the Royal 

 Society. In 1837 he read before the Geological Society a very 

 short paper on the Formation of Mouldy and 44 years later he 

 published to the world in his final volume the result of his 

 researches in this subject. His uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, had sug- 

 gested to him that the sinking of stones and other surface material 

 into the earth might be due to the action of earth-worms. In 

 1842, on some land of his own at Down, he spread a quantity of 

 broken chalk all over the surface of a field to test this theory. In 

 187 1, twenty-nine years later, a trench was dug along the field, and 

 a line of white nodules could be traced seven inches below the 

 surface. x\nother field, called " the stony field," was turned into 

 pasture in 1841, and Darwin wondered if he should live to see the 

 flints covered. In 1881 a horse was galloped across this field 

 without striking a stone with its hoofs ! 



Is it astonishing that a man who could work like this, and 

 wait 40 years to prove his theory, could do anything he chose to 

 undertake in logically testing a scientific truth ? 



In 1838 Darwin read at the Geological Society his paper on 

 The Co7inection of Volcanic Phenomena 7vith the Elevation of 

 Mountain Chains ; when, as Lyell said, "he opened upon De la 

 Beche, Phillips, and others, the whole battery of the earthquakes 

 and volcanoes of the Andes." In the same year, at the early age 

 of 29, we find him filling the honourable post of Secretary to the 

 same Society. 



In 1839 Darwin married his cousin. Miss Emma Wedgwood, 

 and after a very short residence in London settled at Down House, 

 near Down, in Kent. Here he spent the remaining forty years 

 of his life. Of these forty years, his published works, to which 

 we shall presently refer, tell the tale. He was rarely seen away 

 from home, but was one of the speakers at the Oxford meeting of 

 the British Association in 1847, when Robert Chambers read a 



