CHARLES DAR"SVT:if. Ill 



made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate 

 our sin." 



Besides his ' Journal of Researches,' the voyage of the " Beagle " 

 gave rise to several geological papers by him ; to three volumes 

 on the 'Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle,' published separately 

 under the titles of 'The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs,' 

 ' Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands visited . . . ,' 

 and 'Geological Observations on South America,' all by himself; 

 and to five volumes on the ' Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle,' 

 by different naturalists, with notes by him on the habits and range 

 of the species described. The Invertebrata and the plants were 

 described by specialists in scientific publications. 



The most important result of this voyage has yet to be told. 

 "We see in Darwin's ' Journal ' the dawn of a great discovery, for 

 sui'ely the recognition that few only survive in the struggle for 

 existence, is a necessary prelude to the conviction that the fittest 

 survive. " We do not always bear in mind," he says, " how 

 profoundly ignorant we are of the conditions of existence of every 

 animal ; nor do we always remember that some check is constantly 

 preventing the too rapid increase of every organised being left in a 

 state of nature. The supply of food, on the average, remains 

 constant ; yet the tendency in every animal to increase by propaga- 

 tion is geometrical. . . . Every animal in a state of nature 

 regularly breeds ; yet, in a species long established, any great 

 increase in numbers is obviously impossible, and must be checked 

 by some means." Again, there is no more cogent argument in 

 favour of evolution than is furnished by the fact that the living 

 and extinct species of the same continent are much more closely 

 related than are the living species of one continent to the extinct 

 species of another. " The relationship," he says, " though distant, 

 between the Toxodon and the Cajryhara, — the closer relationship 

 between the many extinct Edentata, and the living sloths, ant- 

 eaters, and armadillos, now so eminently characteristic of South 

 American zoology, — and the still closer relationship between the 

 fossil and living species of Ctenomys and Hydrocliosrus, are most 

 interesting facts. . . . This wonderful relationship in the same 

 continent between the dead and the living, will, I doubt not, 

 hereafter throw more light on the appearance of organic beings on 

 our earth, and their disappearance from it, than any other class of 

 facts." 



On the 2nd of October, 1836, Darwin is again in England, and, 

 after spending a few months at Cambridge and elsewhere, and 

 taking his degree of M.A., he settles in London early in 1837, 



