12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



civilised people. But, apart from experience of this kind 

 and the opportunities offered for scientific work, to me, 

 personally, the cruise was extremely valuable. It was 

 good for me to live under sharp discipline; to be down on 

 the realities of existence by living on bare necessaries; to 

 find out how extremely well worth living life seemed to be 

 when one woke up from a night's rest on a soft plank, with 

 the sky for canopy and cocoa and weevilly biscuit the sole 

 prospect for breakfast; and, more especially, to learn to work 

 for the sake of what I got for myself out of it, even if it all 

 went to the bottom and I along with it. My brother officers 

 were as good fellows as sailors ought to be and generally 

 are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor cared anything 

 about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so 

 zealous in pursuit of the objects w^hich my friends, the 

 middies, christened "Buffons," after the title conspicuous 

 on a volume of the "Suites a Buffon," which stood on my 

 shelf in the chart room. 



•During the four years of our absence, I sent home com- 

 munication after communication to the "Linnean Society," 

 with the same result as that obtained by Noah when he sent 

 the raven out of his ark. Tired at last of hearing nothing 

 about them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849 I drew 

 up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it to the Royal 

 Society. This was my dove, if I had only known it. But 

 owing to the movements of the ship, I heard nothing of that 

 either until my return to England in the latter end of the 

 year 1850, when I found that it was printed and published, 

 and that a huge packet of separate copies awaited me. 

 When I hear some of my young friends complain of want 

 of sympathy and encouragement, I am inclined to think 

 that my naval life was not the least valuable part of my 

 education. 



