i837-] GOVERNMENT GRANT. 255 



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 Chancel- 

 lor of the Exchequer.* He appointed to see me this morn- 

 ing, 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 re- 

 striction, 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 Shrewsbury 

 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. f During these two 

 months he was also busy preparing the scheme of the ' Zool- 

 ogy of the Voyage of the Beagle, and in beginning to put to- 

 gether 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. 



f "On the formation of mould," ' Geol. Soc. Proc.' ii. 1838, pp 574- 

 576. 



