DARWIN AND SYSTEMATIC BIOLOGY 299 



I do not understand that passage of Huxley's to imply, 

 as you seem to think, that your father first went in for 

 Barnacles deliberately thinking they would be good training ; 

 but that he took to monographing the Order under that 

 impression, and in this Huxley is I know right. 



Your father had Barnacles on the brain, from Chili 

 onwards ! He talked to me incessantly of beginning to 

 work at his ' beloved Barnacles ' (his favorite expression) 

 long before he did so methodically. It is impossible to 

 say at what stage of progress he realised the necessity of 

 such a training as monographing the Order offered him ; 

 but that he did recognize it and act upon it as a training 

 in systematic biological study, morphological, anatomical, 

 geographical, taxonomic and descriptive, is very certain ; 

 he often alluded to it to me as a valued discipline and added 

 that even the * hateful ' work of digging out synonyms and 

 of describing, not only improved his methods, but opened 

 his eyes to the difficulties and merits of the works of the 

 dullest of cataloguers. 



One result was that he would never allow a depreciatory 

 remark to pass unchallenged on the poorest class of scientific 

 workers, provided their work was honest and good of its 

 kind. I always regarded this as one of the finest traits 

 of his character this generous appreciation of the hodmen 

 of science and of their labors, and which culminated in 

 the ' Steudel ' [i.e. the Index Kewensis], and it was mono- 

 graphing the Barnacles that brought it about. The fact is 

 that no one goes into such a piece of work as his Barnacles 

 upon a cut and dried motive. When once begun various 

 motives supervene or grow that direct the course adopted 

 to this and that end. Your father recognized in conversa- 

 tion with me three stages in his career as biologist, the mere 

 collector, in Cambridge &c. ; the collector and observer, 

 in the Beagle and for some years after ; and the trained 

 naturalist after, and only after, the Cirripede work. That 

 he was a thinker all along is true enough, and there is a 

 vast deal in his writings previous to the Cirripedes that a 

 trained Naturalist could but emulate. 



I have no more to say but that it would have been 

 marvellous if your father had not felt the want of such a 

 training as monographing the Cirripedes would give, and 



