2IO Charles Darwin. 



Mr. Darwin suffered greatly from sea-sickness, or 

 some difificulty which simulated it, and which, in 

 some form, returned at intervals throughout his 

 whole life, as sudden fits of illness which prostrated 

 him for days together, and which were followed by 

 long periods of wakeful convalescence. Under the 

 circumstances, the amount of keen and patient ob- 

 servation, the vast accumulation of facts, and the 

 extensive collections obtained by Mr. Darwin during 

 his voyage, appear more marvellous than ever. 



After his return his health was much shattered, 

 and his studies more or less interrupted for some 

 years. He took his Master's degree in course, and 

 shortly after his return was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society (of which his father and grandfather 

 were previously Fellows), and of the Geological 

 Society, of which last he was made secretary. 



In 1839 he published his epoch-making work "A 

 Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural 

 History of the Various Countries Visited by H. M- 

 S. Beagle " ; the first of that long series of investiga- 

 tions to which his life was devoted, and the publica- 

 tion of which revolutionised the study of biology, 

 and gave to Darwin a position as a naturalist un- 

 paralleled in the history of science. 



In the same year, 1839, M^* Darwin married his 

 cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and retired to the se- 

 cluded and beautiful district of Kent, where, in his 

 country-house of Down Court, near Orpington, more 

 than forty years of his life were spent. The district 

 is purely agricultural, a plateau of chalk, some four 

 hundred feet above the sea, interrupted by the wavy 



