156 DOWN. [Ch. VIII. 



in 1851 and 1854. His volumes on the Fossil Cirripedes were 

 published by the Palseontographical Society in 1851 and 1854. 

 Writing to Sir J. D. Hooker in 1845, my father says : " I 

 hope this next summer to finish my South American Geology,* 

 then to get out a little Zoology, and hurrah for my species 

 work. . ." This passage serves to show that he had at this 

 time no intention of making an exhaustive study of the Cirri- 

 pedes. Indeed it would seem that his original intention was, 

 as I learn from Sir J. D. Hooker, merely to work out one 

 special problem. This is quite in keeping with the following 

 passage in the Autobiography : " When on the coast of Chile, 

 I found a most curious form, which burrowed into the shells 

 of Concholepas, and which differed so much from all other 

 Cirripedes that I had to form a new sub-order for its sole 

 reception. ... To understand the structure of my new Cirri- 

 pede I had to examine and dissect many of the common forms ; 

 and this gradually led me on to take up the whole group." 

 In later years he seems to have felt some doubt as to the value 

 of these eight years of work — for instance when he wrote in 

 his Autobiography — " My work was of considerable use to me, 

 when I had to discuss in the Origin of Species the principles 

 of a natural classification. Nevertheless I doubt whether the 

 work was worth the consumption of so much time." Yet I 

 learn from Sir J. D. Hooker that he certainly recognised at 

 the time its value to himself as systematic training. Sir 

 Joseph writes to me : " Your father recognised three stages in 

 his career as a biologist : the mere collector at Cambridge ; the 

 collector and observer in the Beagle, and for some years 

 afterwards ; and the trained naturalist after, and only after the 

 Cirripede work. That he was a thinker all along is true 

 enough, and there is a vast deal in his writings previous to 

 the Cirripedes that a trained naturalist could but emulate. . . . 

 He often alluded to it as a valued discipline, and added that 

 even the ' hateful ' work of digging out synonyms, and of 

 describing, not only improved his methods but opened his 

 eyes to the difficulties and merits of the works of the dullest 

 of cataloguers. One result was that he would never allow a 



* This refers to the third and last of his geological books, Geological 

 Observation on South America, which was published in 1846. A sentence 

 from a letter of Dec. 11, 1860, may be quoted here — "David Forbes 

 has been carefully working the Geology of Chile, and as I value praise 

 for accurate observation far higher than for any other quality, forgive (if 

 you can) the insufferable vanity of my copying the last sentence in his 

 note : ' I regard your Monograph on Chile as, without exception, one of 

 the finest specimens of Geological inquiry.' I feel inclined to strut like a 

 turkey-cock I " 



