Ch. VHL] 1842—1854 163 



serve as a sketch of his feeling with regard to his sovon years* 

 work at Barnacles* : — 



September 1849. — " It makes mo groan to think that pro- 

 bably 1 shall never again have the exquisite pleasure of 

 making out some new district, of evolving geological light out 

 of some troubled dark region. So I must make the best of my 

 Cirripedia. ..." 



October 1849. — " I have of lato been at work at mere species 

 describing, which is much more difficult than I expected, and 

 has much the same sort of interest as a puzzle has; but I 

 confess I often feel wearied with the work, and cannot help 

 sometimes asking myself what is the good of spending a 

 week or fortnight in ascertaining that certain just perceptible 

 differences blend together and constitute varieties and not 

 species. As long as 1 am on anatomy I never feel myself in 

 that disgusting, horrid, cui bono, inquiring, humour. What 

 miserable work, again, it is searching for priority of names. I 

 have just finished two species, which possess seven generic, 

 and twenty-four specific names ! My chief comfort is, that the 

 work must be sometime done, and I may as well do it, as any 

 one else." 



October 1852. — " 1 am at work at the second volume of the 

 Cirripedia, of which creatures I am wonderfully tired. I hate 

 a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a sailor in 

 a slow-sailing ship. My first volume is out; the only part 

 worth looking at is on the sexes of Ibla end Scalpellum. I 

 hope by next summer to have done with my tedious work." 



July 1853. — " I am extremely glad to hear that you approved 

 of my cirripedial volume. I have spent an almost ridiculous 

 amount of labour on the subject, and certainly would never 

 have undertaken it had I foreseen what a job it was." 



In September, 1854, his Cirripede work was practically 

 finished, and he wrote to Sir J. Hooker : 



" I have been frittering away my time for the last several 



* In 1860 he wrote to Lyell : " Is not Krohn a good fellow ? I have 

 long meant to write to him. He has been working at Cirripedes, and has 

 detected two or three gigantic blunders, about which, I thank Heaven, I 

 spoke rather doubtfully. Such difficult dissection that even Huxley 

 failed. It is chiefly the interpretation which I put on parts that is so 

 wrong, and not the parts which I describe. But they were gigantic 

 blunders, and why I say all this is because Krohn, instead of crowing at 

 all, pointed out my errors with the utmost gentleness and pleasantness " 



There are two papers by Aug. Krohn, one on the Cement Glands, 

 and the other on the development of Cirripedes, Weigmann'a Archiv. xxv. 

 and xxvi. See Autobiography, p. 39, where my father remarks, "I 

 blundered dreadfully about the cement glands." 



*.2 



