82 CHARLES DARWIN. 



Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, a. now recognized 

 classic in geological literature. It is a masterpiece of scientific 

 method. Every fact that Darwin had observed is duly marshalled, 

 and step by step, through cautious watching and crucial experi- 

 ment, we are led up to the grand conclusion that ' fringing-reef/ 

 ' barrier-reef,' and ' atoll ' are to be explained by the gradual 

 subsidence of parts of the bed of the Pacific ; nay, more, we are 

 shown in the author's own matchlessly logical style that the 

 fringing-reef of yesterday becomes the barrier-reef of to-day, and 

 the barrier-reef of to-day is destined to be the atoll of to-morrow.* 



In 1844 he followed with his second w^ork, Geological 

 Observations on Volcanic Islands^ in which we are told the story 

 of the gradual upheaval of those islands. In 1846 he published 

 the third of this series, entitled Geological Observations on 

 South America, in which he deals with the slow and oft- 

 interrupted rise of that country during recent geological time, 

 tracing the marine shells for more than 2,000 miles along the 

 coast, and to as high a level in certain spots as 1,300 feet. In 

 addition to these three volumes, concerning the first of which 

 Geikie says, " This treatise alone would have placed Darwin in the 

 very front of investigators of nature," we have his papers on 

 Erratic Boulders in South America, on the Geology of the 

 Falkland Isla?ids, and a very celebrated one in 1843 on British 

 Glaciers, the result of a visit to Snowdon and its district. Our 

 record is imperfect unless we include here his chapter on the 

 Imperfection of the Geological Record, and the two on 

 Geographical Distribution in the Origin of Species. It is 

 almost impossible to rightly estimate the importance of these three 

 chapters, or their influence on the geological questions of our time, 

 especially as showing how much of palaeontological fact can be 

 readily explained by Darwin's great theory, and how the presence 

 of groups of organisms can be made to tell us the history of the 

 long-continued interchanges of land and sea. 



Botany. — With his accustomed and innate modesty, Darwin 

 always said that he was not by any means a botanist. Perhaps he 

 was not one in the ' dry-as-dust ' sense of the term, and we are 

 thankful that he was not. To the science of Botany, however, he 



* See note at end of paper. 



