622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on species and varieties, by reason of which, when published, " I dare 

 say I shall stand infinitely low in the opinion of all sound naturalists." 

 The papers referred to were the treatise on cirripedes, to which eight 

 years, instead of the " some months " he had anticipated, were devoted. 

 The importance of this labor was not fully appreciated at the time — 

 " I hate a barnacle," he said once in his weariness over the task, " as 

 no man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow-sailing ship " — but 

 Sir Joseph Hooker has written to Mr. Francis Darwin : " Your father 

 recognized three stages in his career as a biologist : the mere collector 

 at Cambridge ; the collector and observer in the Beagle, and for some 

 years afterward ; and the trained naturalist after, and only after, the 

 cirripede work. That he was a thinker all along is true enough, and 

 there is a vast deal in his writings previous to the cirripedes that a 

 trained naturalist could but emulate. . . . He often alluded to it as a 

 valued discipline, and added that even the 'hateful' work of digging 

 out synonyms, and of describing, not only improved his methods but 

 opened his eyes to the difficulties and merits of the works of the dull- 

 est of cataloguers. One result was that he would never allow a de- 

 preciatory remark to pass unchallenged on the poorest class of scientific 

 workers, provided that their work was honest, and good of its kind. I 

 have always regarded it as one of the finest traits of his character — this 

 generous appreciation of the hod-men of science, and of their labors, 

 . . . and it was monographing the barnacles that brought it about." 



Darwin's letters, during the time he was engaged upon the " Origin 

 of Species " and the related works, reveal the minute care with which 

 he examined every trifle of a detail, and sought information from every 

 possible quarter. Here we see bim inquiring of Mr. Fox how early 

 the tail-feathers of young fantail pigeons are developed, and remark- 

 ing upon the difference in the weight of the foot or the wing of a 

 wild and a tame duck. He wants to ascertain whether the young of 

 our domestic breeds differ as much from one another as do their parents, 

 and has no faith in anything short of actual measurement and the rule 

 of three. He asks for lizards' and snakes' eggs to see whether they 

 will float on sea-water, and whether they will keej) alive thus floating 

 for a month or two in his cellar. 



In similar experiments on seeds he is so full of exultant anticipa- 

 tion that he will discover something that will conflict with Hooker's 

 views, that the children are asking him often Avhether he shall beat 

 Dr. Hooker ; and when the seeds have germinated after a salt-water 

 soaking that ought to have killed them, he has pangs of conscience 

 and of vexation because the botanist seemed "to view the experiment 

 like a good Christian." Then he acknowledges Hooker to be a good 

 man to confess that he expected the cress — which vegetated after 

 twenty-one days' immersion — would be killed in a week, " for this 

 gives me a nice little triumph." ]>ut he is also making experiments 

 at which Hooker would have a good right to sneer, "for they are so 



