364 Darwin and Geology 



It may be interesting to note that at the somewhat less lively 

 dining Club — the Philosophical — in the founding of which his friends 

 Lyell and Hooker had taken so active a part, Darwin found himself 

 more at home, and he was a frequent attendant — in spite of his 

 residence being at Down — from 1853 to 1864. He even made 

 contributions on scientific questions after these dinners. In a letter 

 to Hooker he states that he was deeply interested in the reforms 

 of the Royal Society, which the Club was founded to promote. He 

 says also that he had arranged to come to town every Club day " and 

 then my head, I think, will allow me on an average to go to every 

 other meeting. But it is grievous how often any change knocks me upK" 



Of the years 1837 and 1838 Darwin himself says they were "the 

 most active ones which I ever spent, though I was occasionally 

 unwell, and so lost some time.... I also went a little into society"." 

 But of the four years from 1839 to 1842 he has to confess sadly 

 "I did less scientific work, though I worked as hard as I could, 

 than during any other equal length of time in my life. This was 

 owing to frequently recurring unwellness, and to one long and serious 

 illness^." 



Darwin's work at the Geological Society did not by any means 

 engage the whole of his energies, during the active years 1837 and 

 1838. In June of the latter year, leaving town in somewhat bad 

 health, he found himself at Edinburgh again, and engaged in ex- 

 amining the Salisbury Craigs, in a very diffierent spirit to that excited 

 by Jameson's discourse*. Proceeding to the Highlands he then had 

 eight days of hard work at the famous " Parallel Roads of Glen Roy," 

 being favoured with glorious weather. 



He says of the writing of the paper on the subject — the only 

 memoir contributed by Darwin to the Royal Society, to which he had 

 been recently elected — that it was "one of the most difficult and 

 instructive tasks I was ever engaged on." The paper extends to 

 40 quarto pages and is illustrated by two plates. Though it is full of 

 the records of careful observation and acute reasoning, yet the theory 

 of marine beaches Avhich he propounded was, as he candidly admitted 

 in after years^ altogether wrong. The alternative lake-theory he 

 found himself unable to accept at the time, for he could not under- 

 stand how barriers could be formed at successive levels across the 

 valleys ; and until the following year, when the existence of great 

 glaciers in the district was proved by the researches of Agassiz, 

 Buckland and others, the difficulty appeared to him an insuperable 

 one. Although Darwin said of this paper in after years that it " was 

 a great failure and I am ashamed of it " — yet he retained his interest 



1 L. L. II. pp. 42, 43. 2 L_ jr j pp (57^ (53. a L. L. 1. p. 69. 



* L, L. 1. p. 290. * M. L. II. p. 188. 



