GLIMPSES AT DARWIN'S WORKING LIFE. 619 



population is by force disseminated among them in isolated houses, and 

 constitutes at most only little hamlets. The inhabitants, thus dispersed, 

 differ in manners and character from those whom an indefinite abun- 

 dance of underground water has drawn together and condensed into 

 large groups. 



Such are some of the social influences of subterranean waters, the 

 importance of which has not always been fully appreciated. — Trans- 

 lated for the Popular Science MontJily from the lievue des Deux 

 Mondes. 



GLIMPSES AT DARWIN'S WOEKING LIFE. 



Bt WILLIAM IL LAEEABEE. 



THE qualities of Mr. Darwin most prominently brought out in the 

 reading of his " Life and Letters " are his thorough humanism, 

 his industry, his great modesty, amounting to even distrust of his 

 powers, his perfect candor, and his kindly spirit. The piece of his 

 autobiography which was published in the December number of the 

 "Monthly" describes the beginning of his life, and shows how his 

 boyhood was like that of the youth of the majority of men, with noth- 

 ing in it to suggest a probability of future greatness ; a comraonjDlace, 

 humdrum experience, in which all his most active instincts were re- 

 pressed or ignored ; and he was " trained " — that is, the effort was 

 made, with his consent or against it, to fit him to the standard handed 

 down from of old by the schools. As he wrote years afterward for 

 Mr. Gallon's " Life Histories," his schooling omitted all habits of ob- 

 servation or reasoning, and was of no peculiar merit whatever. He 

 was considered, by those who had to do with him educationally, as " a 

 very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect." 

 It does not appear that he ever realized, until the world spoke it to 

 him in tones that he could not fail to hear, that, in all his researches, 

 he was doing more than the simplest, most insignificant work. 



He fared but little better, so far as the recognized course was con- 

 cerned, at the university (of Edinburgh), where the lectures, except 

 those of Dr. Hope on chemistry, were "intolerably dull." But, during 

 his second year there, his brother having ceased to attend the uni- 

 versity, he was left to his own resources ; and this proved to be to 

 his advantage, for he became well acquainted with several young men 

 fond of natural science. He accompanied a pair of his friends on 

 their collecting tours for marine animals, and went trawling with the 

 fishermen for other specimens. From some of these specimens, though 

 without any regular practice in dissection, and having only a wretched 

 microscope, he made a discovery, concerning which he read, in 1826, 

 his first scientific paper before the Plinian Society. "With these ex- 

 periences as his start in real education, he told Mr. Galton that he con- 



