272 Britain's Heritage of Science 



Upper Gower Street. The sustained toil and the discomforts 

 of the voyage had injured Darwin's health, and he and his 

 wife led a life of " extreme quietness." During this period, 

 he states, " I did less scientific work, though I worked as 

 hard as I possibly 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." His health, 

 indeed, prevented his regular attendance at scientific and 

 other gatherings which are among the few attractions London 

 can offer over the country, and in 1842 he removed to the 

 secluded Kentish village of Down. The chief attraction of 

 the place was its quietness, " its chief merit," as Darwin 

 writes, " is its extreme rurality." The house stands a 

 quarter of a mile from the village, whose peaceful charm 

 has been but little altered in the last sixty-seven years. 

 And here it was he says : "I can remember the very spot, 

 whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred 

 to me." The " solution " was " natural selection by means 

 of the survival of the fittest." 



Here for forty years Darwin lived and laboured, in spite 

 of ill-health which often laid him aside for weeks, his daily 

 task always confined to very few hours of work. We need 

 not follow further the details of this happy life, but one 

 event, and that a well-known one, may briefly be referred 

 to. Darwin's work was so catholic, its bulk so great and 

 its effect so stimulating, that few have realised how vast 

 was the output of scientific work which, though often an 

 invalid, he gave to the world. The extent of the work has 

 been perhaps a little overshadowed by the immense import- 

 ance of that great generalization known as Natural Selection. 

 Sir Wm. Thiselton-Dyer has reminded us that Darwin lies 

 beside Newton in Westminster Abbey, and he adds : "It 

 is the singular fortune of an illustrious University that of 

 two of her sons, one should have introduced a rational order 

 into the organic and the other into the inorganic world." 



In 1908 was celebrated the Jubilee of the reading of a 

 Paper at the Linnean Society entitled, " On the Tendency 

 of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of 

 Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection." This 

 was the joint production of Charles Darwin and of Alfred 



