122 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



Shortly after his return he settled in London, 

 prepared his journal and manuscripts of observations 

 for publication, and opened, he says, under date of 

 July 1837, 'my first note-book for facts in relation 

 to the origin of species, about which I had long 

 reflected, and never ceased working for the next 

 twenty years.' He acted for two years as one of 

 the honorary secretaries of the Geological Society, 

 which brought him into close relations with Lyell, 

 and, as his health then allowed him to go into 

 society, he saw a good deal of prominent literary 

 and scientific contemporaries. 



In the autumn of 1842, two years and eight 

 months after his marriage with his first cousin 

 Emma Wedgwood, who died in the autumn of 1896, 

 Darwin removed from London, the air and social 

 demands of which were alike unsuited to his health, 

 and finally fixed upon a house in the secluded 

 village of Down, near Beckenham, where he spent 

 the rest of his days. Henceforth the life of Darwin 

 is merged in the books in which, from time to time, 

 he gave the result of his long years of patient 

 observation and inquiry, from the epoch-making 

 Origin to the monograph on earthworms. With 

 bad health, apparently due to gouty tendencies 

 aggravated by chronic sea - sickness during his 

 voyage ; with nights that never gave unbroken 

 sleep ; and days that were never passed without 

 prostrating pain ; he might well have felt justified 

 in doing nothing whatever. But he was saved from 

 the accursed monotony of a wealthy invalid's life by 

 his insatiate delight in searching for that solution of 

 the problem of the mutability of species which time 



