DARWIN AND WALLACE 



33 



vessels, the Beagle touched once more at Brazil, re- 

 turning home to England in 1836, after an absence of 

 five years. Charles Darwin himself believed this trip 

 to have been both his education and his opportunity. 

 He had started on it a rather careless and indifferent 

 student. He returned from it the most painstaking 

 and patient naturalist the world has ever known. His 

 father, who had hardly consented to his going because 

 he believed him not stable enough to be intrusted to 

 his own devices for so long a period, was profoundly 

 moved at the sight of him on his return. Believing 

 in phrenology, as did many of the physicians of his 

 time, his father turned to his mother and said, "Look 

 at the shape of his head ; it is quite altered" ; which, 

 translated into the language of to-day, would read, 

 "How wonderfully the young man has developed." 



A part of Charles Darwin's duty to the British 

 Government was to write a narrative of the voyage, 

 and this account of his trip upon the Beagle is one 

 of the great classics of travel in the English language. 

 It won the confidence and respect of a wide circle 

 of readers. In his next book he published his ob- 

 servations made at the Keeling Atoll and announced 

 his theory of the formation of coral islands. This 

 was a distinctly scientific investigation, and it won 

 such immediate favor among geologists as to increase 

 materially the young man's reputation. No one man 



