194 WRITING OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [Ch. XI. 



make my view clear (and never giving briefly more than a fact 

 or two, and slurring over difficulties), I cannot make it shorter. 

 It will yet take me three or four months ; so slow do I work, 

 though never idle. You cannot imagine what a service you 

 have done me in making me make this Abstract ; for though I 

 thought I had got all clear, it has clarified my brains very 

 much, by making me weigh the relative importance of the 

 several elements. 



He was nst so fully occupied but that he could find time to 

 help his boys in their collecting. He sent a short notice to 

 the Entomologists' Weekly Intelligencer, June 25th, 1859, 

 recording the capture of Licinus silphoides, Clytus mysticus, 

 Panagccus l-pustulatus. The notice begins with the words, 

 " We three very young collectors having lately taken in the 

 parish of Down," &c, and is signed by three of his boys, but 

 was clearly not written by them. I have a vivid recollection 

 of the pleasure of turning out my bottle of dead beetles for my 

 father to name, and the excitement, in which he fully shared, 

 when any of them proved to be uncommon ones. The following 

 letter to Mr. Fox (Nov. 13th, 1858), illustrates this point : — 



"lam reminded of old days by my third boy having just 

 begun collecting beetles, and he caught the other day Brachinus 

 crepitans, of immortal Whittlesea Mere memory. My blood 

 boiled with old ardour when he caught a Licinus — a prize 

 unknown to me." 



And again to Sir John Lubbock : — 



" I feel like an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet 

 when I read about the capturing of rare beetles — is not this a 

 magnanimous simile for a decayed entomologist ? — It really 

 almost makes me long to begin collecting again. Adios. 



" ' Floreat Entomologia ' 1 —to which toast at Cambridge I 

 have drunk many a glass of wine. So again, ' Floreat Ento- 

 mologia.' — N.B. I have not now been drinking any glassos full 

 of wine." 



G D. to J. D. Booker. Down, Jan. 23rd, 1859. 



... I enclose letters to you and me from Wallace. I ad- 

 mire extremely the spirit in which they are written. I never 

 felt very sure what he would say. He must be an amiable 

 man. Please return that to me, and Lyell ought to be told 

 how well satisfied he is. These letters have vividly brought 

 before mo how much I owe to your and Lyell's most kind and 

 generous conduct in all this affair. 



. . . How glad I shall be when the Abstraot is finished, and 

 I can rest ! . . . 



