44 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oh. IL 



Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that 

 my work has been imperfect, and when I have been con- 

 temptuously criticised, and even when I have been overpraised, 

 so that I have felt mortified, it has been my greatest comfort 

 to say hundreds of times to myself that " I have worked as 

 hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more than 

 this." I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Tierra del 

 Fuego, thinking (and, I believe, that I wrote home to the 

 effect) that I could not employ my life better than in adding a 

 little to Natural Science. This I have done to the best of my 

 abilities, and critics may say what they like, but they cannot 

 destroy this conviction. 



During the two last months of 1859 I was fully occupied in 

 preparing a second edition of the Origin, and by an enormous 

 correspondence. On January 1st, 1860, 1 began arranging my 

 notes for my work on the Variation of Animals and Plants under 

 Domestication; but it was not published until the beginning 

 of 1868 ; the delay having been caused partly by frequent 

 illnesses, one of which lasted seven months, and partly by 

 being tempted to publish on other subjects which at the 

 time interested me more. 



On May 15th, 1862, my little book on the Fertilisation of 

 Orchids, which cost me ten months' work, was published : 

 most of the facts had been slowly accumulated during several 

 previous years. During the summer of 1839, and, I believe, 

 during the previous summer, I was led to attend to the cross- 

 fertilisation of flowers by the aid of insects, from having come 

 to the conclusion in my speculations on the origin of species, 

 that crossing played an important part in keeping specific 

 forms constant. I attended to the subject more or less during 

 every subsequent summer ; and my interest in it was greatly 

 enhanced by having procured and read in November 1841, 

 through the advice of Robert Brown, a copy of C. K. Sprengel's 

 wonderful book, Das entdeckte Geheimniss der Natur. For 

 some years before 1862 I had specially attended to the fertili- 

 sation of our British orchids ; and it seemed to me the best 

 plan to prepare as complete a treatise on this group of plants as 

 well as I could, rather than to utilise the great mass of matter 

 which I had slowly collected with respect to other plants. 



My resolve proved a wise one ; for since the appearance of 

 my book, a surprising number of papers and separate works on 

 the fertilisation of all kinds of flowers have appeared ; and 

 these are far better done than I could possibly have effected. 

 The merits of poor old Sprengel, so long overlooked, are now 

 fully recognised many years after his death. 



