414 MISCELLANEA. [1879 



scientific book which I have read for a long time. You will 

 perhaps be surprised how slow I have been, but my head 

 prevents me reading except at intervals. If I were asked 

 which parts have interested me most, I should be somewhat 

 puzzled to answer? I fancy that the general reader would 

 prefer your account of Japan. For myself I hesitate between 

 your discussions and description of the Southern ice, which 

 seems to me admirable, and the last chapter which contained 

 many facts and views new to me, though I had read your 

 papers on the stony Hydroid Corals, yet your resume made 

 me realise better than I had done before, what a most curious 

 case it is. 



You have also collected a surprising number of valuable 

 facts bearing on the dispersal of plants, far more than in any 

 other book known to me. In fact your volume is a mass of 

 interesting facts and discussions, with hardly a superfluous 

 word ; and I heartily congratulate you on its publica- 

 tion. 



Your dedication makes me prouder than ever. 



Believe me, yours sincerely, 



CH. DARWIN. 



[In November, 1879, he answered for Mr. Galton a series 

 of questions utilised in his ' Inquiries into Human Faculty,' 

 1883. He wrote to Mr. Galton : 



" I have answered the questions as well as I could, but 

 they are miserably answered, for I have never tried looking 

 into my own mind. Unless others answer very much better 

 than I can do, you will get no good from your queries. Do 

 you not think you ought to have the age of the answerer ? I 

 think so, because I can call up faces of many schoolboys, not 

 seen for sixty years, with much distinctness, but nowadays I 

 may talk with a man for an hour, and see him several times 

 consecutively, and, after a month, I am utterly unable to 

 recollect what he is at all like. The picture is quite washed 

 out. The greater number of the answers are given m the 

 annexed table."] 



