88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the briefer and more popular account which has become one of 

 the classics of English literature. 



More than this, and vastly transcending it in the importance 

 of its bearing on the future of science, it was while going round 

 the world and observing on the Beagle that those fundamental 

 facts were gathered and stored in Mr. Darwin's mind which, worked 

 over and developed in after years and compared and combined with 

 subsequently accumulated facts, bore fruit in the Origin of Spe- 

 cies and the transformation of science that resulted upon the enun- 

 ciation of Mr. Darwin's theory of descent. 



We all regard the association of any object with great events 

 or with those in which we have great interest as making it pre- 

 cious. We endow ships with a kind of personality, regard them 

 affectionately, and often speak of them fondly, as if they were real 

 living beings in whom we had an interest. Such feelings we might 

 legitimately entertain with regard to the Beagle, so closely asso- 

 ciated with the history we have referred to. Few associations 

 deserve, in fact, to be more highly valued than that of this brig, 

 the Beagle, with Mr. Darwin's books and his theory. It is there- 

 fore a matter of legitimate concern to inquire into what was the 

 fate of the famous vessel. 



The inquiry has been made, and is answered by the Rev. V. 

 Marshall Law, of Oakland, Cal., whose account follows: 



" I was lying in my room, in Tsukiji, as I had been day after day, 

 in 1890, watching the lazy roll of the school-ship in the Imperial 

 Naval Academy, just a little to the south, when a caller and an 

 old resident, Mr. Arthur Morris, said to me, ' I see you have Dar- 

 win's old ship, the Beagle, in plain sight out there.' 



" ' Is that the Beagle? ' I asked in great surprise. 



" He assured me that it was, and somehow after he had gone it 

 impressed itself more strongly on my mind the more I thought 

 of it. I lay ill, and part of the time in delirium, for ten days. 

 When I at last got up, the Beagle was gone. I sent inquiries 

 to the Naval Academy, but no one seemed to know anything 

 about her. As soon as I was able to go out, I lost no time in 

 setting on foot inquiries of the whereabouts of the missing ship. 

 I finally learned that she had probably gone to the Imperial Navy 

 Yard in Yokosuka, about thirty miles from Tokio. As soon as I 

 was able to travel we started to go to Yokosuka in search of the 

 missing vessel. Before this, however, I had taken the precaution 

 to put on the track the Englishman, Mr. F. W. Hammond, who 

 taught the young Japanese gunnery in the Imperial Naval Acad- 

 emy at Tokio, and he promised to do all in his power— which in 

 this instance was very great — to help me in my search for the 



