142 LONDON AND CAMBKIDGE. [Ch. VII 



are plenty who will undertake the description of whole tribes 

 of animals, of which I know nothing." 



As to his Geological Collection he was soon able to write : 

 "I [have] disposed of the most important part [of] my 

 collections, by giving all the fossil bones to the College 

 of Surgeons, casts of them will be distributed, and descrip- 

 tions published. They are very curious and valuable ; one 

 head belonged to some gnawing animal, but of the size of 

 a Hippopotamus ! Another to an ant-eater of the size of a 

 horse ! " 



My father's specimens included (besides the above-mentioned 

 Toxodon and Scelidotherium) the remains of Mylodon, Glosso- 

 therium, another gigantic animal allied to the ant-eater, and 

 Macrauchenia. His discovery of these remains is a matter of 

 interest in itself, but it has a special importance as a point 

 in his own life, his speculation on the extinction of these 

 extraordinary creatures * and on their relationship to living 

 forms having formed one of the chief starting-points of his 

 views on the origin of species. This is shown in the following 

 extract from his Pocket Book for this year (1837) : " In July 

 opened first note-book on Transmutation of Species. Had 

 been greatly struck from about the month of previous March 

 on character of South American fossils, and species on 

 Galapagos Archipelago. These facts (especially latter), origin 

 of all my views." 



His affairs being thus so far prosperously managed he was 

 able to put into execution his plan of living at Cambridge, 

 where he settled on December 10th, 1836. 



" Cambridge," he writes, " yet continues a very pleasant, 

 but not half so merry a place as before. To walk through the 

 courts of Christ's College, and not know an inhabitant of a 

 single room, gave one a feeling half melancholy. The only 

 evil I found in Cambridge was its being too pleasant : there 

 was some agreeable party or another every evening, and one 

 cannot say one is engaged with so much impunity there as in 

 this great city." f 



Early in the spring of 1837 he left Cambridge for London, 

 and a week later he was settled in lodgings at 36 Great 



* I have often heard him speak of the despair with which he had to 

 break off the projecting extremity of a huge, partly excavated bone, when 

 the boat waiting for him would wait no longer. 



t A trilling record of my father's presence in Cambridge occurs in the 

 book kept in Christ's College Combination-room, in which fines and bets 

 are recorded, the earlier entries giving a curious impression of the after- 

 dinner frame of mind of the Fellows. The bets are not allowed to be 



