284- ^ETAT. 28. 



[In August heVrites to Henslow to announce the success of 

 the scheme for the publication of the ' Zoology of the Voyage 

 of the Beagle! through the promise of a grant of .1000 from 

 the Treasury : " I have delayed writing to you, to thank you 

 most sincerely for having so effectually managed my affair. 

 I waited till I had an interview with the Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer.* He appointed to see me this morning, and 

 I had a long conversation with him, Mr. Peacock being 

 present. Nothing could be more thoroughly obliging and 

 kind than his whole manner. He made no sort of restric- 

 tion, but only told me to make the most of [the] money, 

 which of course I am right willing to do. 



" I expected rather an awful interview, but I never found 

 anything less so in my life. It will be my fault if I do not 

 make a good work ; but I sometimes take an awful fright 

 that I have not materials enough. It will be excessively 

 satisfactory at the end of some two years to find all materials 

 made the most they were capable of." 



Later in the autumn he wrote to Henslow : " I have not 

 been very well of late, with an uncomfortable palpitation of 

 the heart, and my doctors urge me strongly to knock off all 

 work, and go and live in the country for a few weeks," 

 He accordingly took a holiday of about a month at Shrews- 

 bury and Maer, and paid Fox a visit in the Isle of Wight. 

 It was, I believe, during this visit, at Mr. Wedgwood's house 

 at Maer, that he made his first observations on the work 

 done by earthworms, and late in the autumn he read a paper 

 on the subject at the Geological Society.! During these 

 two months he was also busy preparing the scheme of the 

 * Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle! and in beginning to put 

 together the Geological results of his travels. 



The following letter refers to the proposal that he should 

 take the Secretaryship of the Geological Society.] 



* T. Spring Rice. ' Geol. Soc. Proc.' ii. 1838, pp. 574- 



t " On the formation of mould," 576. 



