Oh. VIII.] 1842—1854. 155 



more plainly than by mere reference, how much I geologically 

 owe you. Those authors, however, who, like you, educate 

 people's minds as well as teach them special facts, can never, 

 I should think, have full justice done them except by posterity, 

 for the mind thus insensibly improved can hardly perceive its 

 own upward ascent. I had intended putting in the present 

 acknowledgment in tho third part of my Geology, but its salo 

 is so exceedingly small that I should not have had tho satis- 

 faction of tliinking that as far as lay in my power I had owned, 

 though imperfectly, my debt. Pray do not think that I am so 

 silly, as to suppose that my dedication can any ways gratify 

 you, except so far as I trust you will recoive it, as a most 

 sincere mark of my gratitude and friendship. I think I have 

 improved this edition, especially the second part, which I have 

 just finished. I have added a good deal about the Fuegians, 

 and cut down into half the mercilessly long discussion on 

 climate and glaciers, &c. I do not recollect anything added 

 to tho first part, long enough to call your attention to ; there 

 is a page of description of a very curious breed of oxen in 

 Banda Oriental. I should like you to read the few last pages ; 

 there is a little discussion on extinction, which will not perhaps 

 strike you as new, though it has so struck me, and has placed 

 in my mind all the difficulties with respect to the causes of 

 extinction, in the same class with other difficulties which are 

 generally quite overlooked and undervalued by naturalists ; I 

 ought, however, to have made my discussion longer and shown 

 by facts, as I easily could, how steadily every species must be 

 checked in its numbers. 



A pleasant notice of the Journal occurs in a letter from 

 Humboldt to Mrs. Austin, dated June 7, 1844 * : — 



" Alas 1 you have got some one in England whom you do 

 not read — young Darwin, who went with the expedition to the 

 Straits of Magellan. He has succeeded far better than myself 

 with the subject I took up. There are admirable descriptions 

 of tropical nature in his journal, which you do not read because 

 the author is a zoologist, which you imagine to be synonymous 

 with bore. Mr. Darwin has another merit, a very rare one in 

 your country — he has praised me." 



October 1846 to October 1854. 



The time between October 1846, and October 1854, was 

 practically given up to working at the Cirripedia (Barnacles) ; 

 the results were published in two volumes by the Ray Society 



* Tliree Generations of Enqlishioomen, by Janet Hobs (1888), vol. i. p. 195. 



