40 



highest order. He was generous and kind to all. His domestic 

 relations were very happy ; his letters constantly abound with 

 references to family matters. One trouble haunted him lest his 

 children should inherit his bad health. He also kept careful 

 records of all business matters, all money spent and all received. 

 Letters were carefully kept. He made a practice of writing 

 down his observations, many of his thoughts and ideas with 

 their conditions ; these were indexed and referred to when 

 necessary. He kept large portfolios in a convenient place in 

 his study, and by this means he accumulated a vast store of 

 accurate knowledge. 



The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection was the 

 great work of his life, and this made him famous. In his auto- 

 biography he gives the reason why he was first induced to think 

 of this subject. "During the voyage of the Beagle I had been 

 deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great 

 fossil animals covered with armour like that on existing arma- 

 dilloes ; secondly by the manner in which closely allied animals 

 replace one another in proceeding southward over the continent ; 

 and thirdly by the South American character of most of the 

 productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more especially 

 by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of 

 the group — none of the islands appearing to be very ancient in 

 a geological sense." This and reading Lamarck seem to have 

 been the birth of this great idea. 



It was in 1844 that he wrote the sketch of the work and sub- 

 mitted it to Sir Jos. Hooker. Later on he was advised to write 

 it out more fully, and this he did in 1858, and when he was 

 doing this he received from Mr. A. R. Wallace, a gentleman who 

 was making observations in the Malay Archipelago, an essay 

 " On the Tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the 

 original type; " and this essay contained exactly the same theory 

 as his own. This was rather serious, but Mr. Wallace recognised 

 the coincidence and saw that Mr. Darwin was in advance of him, 

 so their joint productions were published in the Journal of the 

 Linnean Society. Singular to say it created very little comment. 

 Prof. Houghton of Dublin, said that the truth in it was old and 

 the news was untrue. The writing of the work took 13 months, 

 and it was published in 1859 — November. When the book was 

 published the reviewers treated it most unmercifully,J',and very 

 few people believed anything of it— and after it had been 

 published a year and a half Mr. Darwin in a letter to Sir J. 

 Hooker tabulates 15 only whom he knows to be adherents to the 

 cause. 



His next work was on plants and animals under domestication. 

 Then in 1871 he published his Descent of Man, and to show 

 what is meant by that I will quote an extract from the preface. 



