A CHILD'S DEATH 63 



Three years afterwards, writing to Darwin, whose sister, Mrs. 

 Langton, was hopelessly ill, he is pursued by the same memory. 



M I have been so haunted by death and his darts this 6 or 

 8 years, that I can hardly bear to look at my children asleep 

 in bed. I used to think a child asleep not only the loveliest 

 thing in creation, but the most gratifying in every respect 

 — leaving nothing to be desired except that it would not 

 grow older. All is changed now. 



The death of Falconer in January 1865 took away an old 

 and warm-hearted friend of both Darwin and Hooker. 



Poor old Falconer ! how my mind runs back to those 

 happiest of all my days, that I used to spend at Down 20 

 years ago — when I left your house with my heart in my 

 mouth like a school-boy. 



What a mountainous mass of admirable and accurate 

 information dies with our dear old friend. I shall miss him 

 greatly, not only personally, but as a scientific man of 

 unflinching and uncompromising integrity, and of great 

 weight in Murchisonian and other counsels, where ballast 

 is sadly needed. The inconceivability of our being born 

 for nothing better than such a petty existence as ours is, 

 gives me some hope of meeting in a better world. What 

 does it all mean ? . . . When we think what millions upon 

 millions of lives and intellects it has taken to work up to a 

 knowledge of gravity and natural selection, we really do 

 seem a contemptible creature intellectually, and when we 

 feel the death of friends more keenly the older we grow 

 we do strike me as being corporeally most miserable, for 

 we have no pleasures to compensate fully for our griefs and 

 pains : these alone are unalloyed. 



Three years later Falconer's ' Palseontological Memoirs ' 

 appeared — and Hooker wrote to Darwin : 



Feb. 1, 1868. 



What a fine work Dr. Murchison x has made of dear old 

 Falconer's Memoirs; it strikes me that it will be most 



1 Charles Murchison (1830-79), F.R.S. 1866, a cousin of Sir Roderick, was a 

 distinguished physician, who served in India 1853-5, and was Professor of 

 Chemistry at Calcutta. Returning to London he won a high reputation both 

 as a practitioner and as a lecturer at several of the great hospitals. He made 

 many contributions to medical science, and was a considerable geologist. 



