SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [1863. 



. . . Notwithstanding the very pleasant reason you give for 

 our not enjoying a holiday, namely, that we have no vices, it 

 is a horrid bore. I have been trying for health's sake to be 

 idle, with no success. What I shall now have to do, will be to 

 erect a tablet in Down Church, " Sacred to the Memory, &c.," 

 and officially die, and then publish books, " by the late Charles 

 Darwin," for I cannot think what has come over me of late ; I 

 always suffered from the excitement of talking, but now it has 

 become ludicrous. I talked lately ij hours (broken by tea 

 by myself) with my nephew, and I was [ill] half the night. 

 It is a fearful evil for self and family. 



Good-night. Ever yours. 



C. DARWIN. 



[The following letter to Sir Julius von Haast,* is an 

 example of the sympathy which he felt with the spread and 

 growth of science in the colonies. It was a feeling not ex- 

 pressed once only, but was frequently present in his 

 mind, and often found utterance. When we, at Cambridge, 

 had the satisfaction of receiving Sir J. von Haast into our 

 body as a Doctor of Science (July 1886), I had the oppor- 

 tunity of hearing from him of the vivid pleasure which this, 

 and other letters from my father, gave him. It was pleasant 

 to see how strong had been the impression made by my 

 father's warm-hearted sympathy an impression which seemed, 

 after more than twenty years, to be as fresh as when it was 

 first received :] 



C. Darwin to Julius von Haast. 



Down, Jan. 22 [1863]. 



DEAR SIR, I thank you most sincerely for sending me 

 your Address and the Geological Report. f I have seldom in 



* Sir Julius von Haast was a German by birth, but had long been resi- 

 dent in New Zealand. He was, in 1862, Government Geologist to the 

 Province of Canterbury. 



\ Address to the ' Philosophical Institute of Canterbury (N. Z.).' The 



