PREFACE 



TO THE FIRST EDITION (1892). 



In preparing this volume, which is practically an abbre- 

 viation of the Life and Letters (1887), my aim has been to 

 retain as far as possible the personal parts of those volumes. 

 To render this feasible, large numbers of the more purely 

 scientific letters are omitted, or represented by the citation of 

 a few sentences.* In certain periods of my father's life the 

 scientific and the personal elements run a parallel course, 

 rising and falling together in their degree of interest. Thus 

 the writing of the Origin of Species, and its publication, appeal 

 equally to the reader who follows my father's career from 

 interest in the man, and to the naturalist who desires to know 

 something of this turning point in the history of Biology. 

 This part of the story has therefore been told with nearly the 

 full amount of available detail. 



In arranging my material I have followed a roughly 

 chronological sequence, but the character and variety of my 

 father's researches make a strictly chronological order an 

 impossibility. It was his habit to work more or less simul- 

 taneously at several subjects. Experimental work was often 

 carried on as a refreshment or variety, while books entailing 

 reasoning and the marshalling of large bodies of facts were 



* I have not thought it necessary to indicate all the omissions in the 

 abbreviated letters. 



