CHAPTER IV. 



IF no other record of Darwin's twenty-two years (1837- 

 59) of life and thought after his return to England 

 remained than the papers and books he published during 

 that period, we should find enough to place him on a 

 level with the most gifted biologists and geologists of his 

 age. But all that time he was occupied with thoughts, 

 researches, and experiments, of which the world at large 

 perceived no fruits. Few persons suspected that a 

 tremendous revolution in scientific thought was in 

 preparation at the quiet country home at Down. New 

 species of animals and plants were being described by 

 naturalists at an alarming rate. The bulk of knowledge 

 of specific characters and the necessity of specialisation 

 bade fair to make every species-monger a dry and 

 narrow pedant; and the pedants quarrelled about the 

 characters and limits of their species. 



In the later years of this period some rays of improve- 

 ment shone out. To end the reign of Owen's misleading 

 types and imaginary archetypes, there arose a wielder of 

 two potent words, "morphology" and "biology," the 

 sciences of form and of life, who showed that differences 

 of adult form grew out of likeness and simplicity in the 



