448 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
that the “struggle for existence” first revealed itself to men who 
had spent the greater part of their lives in the open air; no chance 
that it was two travelers ike Darwin and Wallace who first per- 
ceived the dependence of one species upon another and the com- 
petition between them. 
From the little that I have been able to tell you of Darwin’s life 
in Down you can gather what a rich, full life it was. You will now 
wish to hear something of the man himself and his character. 
Unfortunately I never saw him. An affection of the eyes which 
has troubled me for forty-five years, and has restricted my activities 
in many directions, prevented my traveling to England while Darwin 
till lived and was relatively vigorous. Therefore I can not sketch 
the impression made by his personality from experience. But we 
have a short autobiography which reveals his nature clearly, and in 
addition a most detailed and sympathetic picture of him by his son 
Francis. 
He was tall, nearly 6 feet in height, and his most striking features, 
the high forehead, the large, prominent and bushy eyebrows, the 
blunt nose, and energetic mouth are well known. No one interested 
in Darwin’s personality should fail to read both Francis Darwin’s 
account of him¢ and his autobiography. Taken together they give 
a picture of the man which could not be more truthful and could 
hardly be more complete. 
Add to this picture what we can gather from his scientific works, 
and especially from the accounts of his journey, and we find that 
he had a great and comprehensive mind, concerned in the main with 
general conceptions, yet possessing in a high degree the faculty of 
becoming sympathetically absorbed in detail. He took pleasure in 
small things as in large, and was able alike to study with the most 
painstaking minuteness the structural details of a flower or a -crus- 
tacean, or to draw far-reaching conclusions from an enormous number 
of isolated facts. He possessed the fundamental qualities of a nat- 
uralist; great powers of observation and absolute accuracy; the 
most extreme caution in judgment is revealed in all his writings, 
and his presentment of his ideas is always simple and entirely free 
from arrogance or vanity, for a great natural modesty was one of 
the main features of his character. But his theories clearly show 
that he was not lacking in imagination, for they could never have 
been thought out without it. He was not a keen critic, grasping a 
thing quickly and illuminating it at once; he was, on the contrary, 
rather inclined to take too favorable a view of the work of others, 
and had a tendency, by no means very common, to acknowledge the 
achievements of strangers, and to take a positive delight in them. 
@“Tife and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an Autobiographical Chap- 
ter.” Edited by his son, Francis Darwin. London, 1887. 
