PROPERTY OF 

 THE CITY OF ORK. 



MY LIFE 



A RECORD OF EVENTS AND OPINIONS 



CHAPTER XXV 



MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES — DARWIN 



Soon after I returned home, in the summer of 1862, Mr. 

 Darwin invited me to come to Down for a night, where I had 

 the great pleasure of seeing him in his quiet home, and in the 

 midst of his family. A year or two later I spent a week-end 

 with him in company with Bates, Jenner Weir, and a few other 

 naturalists; but my most frequent interviews with him were 

 when he spent a few weeks with his brother, Dr. Erasmus Dar- 

 win, in Queen Anne Street, which he usually did every year 

 when he was well enough, in order to see his friends and col- 

 lect information for his various works. On these occasions I 

 usually lunched with him and his brother, and sometimes one 

 other visitor, and had a little talk on some of the matters 

 specially interesting him. He also sometimes called on me 

 in St. Mark's Crescent for a quiet talk or to see some of my 

 collections. 



My first letter from him dealing with scientific matters was 

 in August, 1862, and our correspondence was very extensive 

 during the period occupied in writing or correcting his earlier 

 books on evolution, down to the publication of " The Expres- 

 sion of the Emotions in Man and Animals," in 1872, and after- 

 wards, at longer intervals, to within less than a year of his 

 death. A considerable selection of our correspondence has 

 been published in the " Life and Letters" (1887), and espe- 



