180 GROWTH OF THE OB1GIN OF SPECIES. [Oh. X. 



C. D. to J. D. Hooker. [April 14th, 1855.] 



. . . You are a good man to confess that you expected the 

 cress would be killed in a week, for this gives me a nice little 

 triumph. The children at first were tremendously eager, and 

 asked me often, " whether I should beat Dr. Hooker ! " The 

 cress and lettuce have just vegetated well after twenty-one 

 days' immersion. But I wiH write no more, which is a great 

 virtue in me ; for it is to me a very great pleasure telling you 

 everything I do. 



... If you knew some of the experiments (if they may be 

 so called) which I am trying, you would have a good right to 

 sneer, for they are so absurd even in my opinion that I dare not 

 teU you. 



Have not some men a nice notion of experimentising ? I 

 have had a letter telling me that seeds must have great power of 

 resisting salt water, for otherwise how could they get to islands '? 

 This is the true way to solve a problem ? 



Experiments on the transportal of seeds through the agency 

 of animals, also gave him much labour. He wrote to Fox 

 (1855) :— 



" All nature is perverse and will not do as I wish it ; and 

 just at present I wish I had my old barnacles to work at, and 

 nothing new." 



And to Hooker : — 



" Everything has been going wrong with me lately : the fish 

 at the Zoolog. Soc. ate up lots of soaked seeds, and in imagina- 

 tion they had in my mind been swallowed, fish and all, by a 

 heron, had been carried a hundred miles, been voided on the 

 banks of some other lake and germinated splendidly, when lo 

 and behold, the fish ejected vehemently, and with disgust equal 

 to my own, all the seeds from their mouths." 



THE UNFINISHED BOOK. 



In his Autobiographical sketch (p. 41) my father wrote : — 

 " Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty 

 fully, and I began at once to do so on a scale three, or four 

 times as extensive as that which was afterwards followed in 

 my Origin of Species; yet it was only an abstract of the 

 materials which I had collected." The remainder of the 

 present chapter is chiefly concerned with the preparation 

 of this unfinished book. 



The work was begun on May 14th, and steadily continued up 

 to June 1858, when it was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. 



