GLIMPSES AT DARWIN'S WORKING LIFE. 623 



absui'd, even in my opinion, that I dare not tell you." Everything — 

 for he was ti*ying to show that seeds and eggs could be carried on 

 ocean -currents for indefinite distances and then develop — depended on 

 the seeds floating. If, however, the seeds should sink, and sink after 

 new trials, he would still not give up the floating, but, as a last re- 

 source, "must believe in the pod, or even whole plant or branch 

 washed into the sea ; with floods, and slips, and earthquakes, this 

 must be continually happening, and, if kept wet, I fancy the pods, etc., 

 would not open and shed their seeds." Again, he begins to think the 

 floating question more serious than the germinating one, and is making 

 all the inquiries he can on the subject. He tells how three plants have 

 come up out of the earth perfectly inclosed in the roots of trees, and 

 twenty-nine plants out of the tablespoonful of mud from the little 

 pond ; and how Hooker was struck when shown how much mud had 

 been scraped off one duck's feet ; these facts all being regarded as 

 illustrating the ways in which seeds might have been transported 

 to different islands. He thanks ^Yallace for an offer to look after 

 horses' stripes ; wants him to add donkeys, if there are any ; and ex- 

 presses a community of interest with him in bees' combs. He tries 

 experiments on the struggle for existence with thick plantations of 

 weeds in which the fate of each seedling is noted ; and observes how 

 young fir-trees flourish in ground that is fenced, while others, in the 

 same plantation, unprotected from cattle, are invisible till closely 

 looked for, and do not grow to be more than three inches high in 

 twenty-six years. 



While thus attentive to the minutest details of fact, he declares 

 himself "a firm believer that without speculation there is no good 

 and original observation " ; and that " the naturalists who accumulate 

 facts and make many partial generalizations are the real benefactors 

 of science. Those who merely accumulate facts I can not very much 

 respect." 



The " Origin of Species " was at first intended to be published 

 simply as an " Abstract," because the author regarded the use of some 

 such term as the only possible apology for not giving references and 

 facts in full, but the publisher objected to it, and the work appeared 

 under the title it bears. There was a question whether it would be 

 advisable to tell Mr. Murray that the book was "not more unortho- 

 dox than the subject makes inevitable"; or would it be better to say 

 nothing to Mr. Murray, " and assume that he can not object to this 

 much unorthodoxy, which, in fact, is not more than any geological 

 treatise which runs slap counter to Genesis " ? 



Mr. Darwin had much difficulty with his style. "While engaged 

 upon his earlier works, he wrote : " I shall always feel respect for 

 every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no 

 idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost 

 one," and, " It is an awful thing to say to one's self, ' Every fool and 



