CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. 365 



life proved the wisdom of his choice. He said in 

 after years, " ISTo one can be too kind to my dear 

 wife, who is worth her weight in gold many times 

 over." 



They lived at No. 12 Upper Gower Street, as he 

 wrote a college mate, " a life of extreme quietness. 

 . . . We have given up all parties, for they agree 

 with neither of us ; and if one is quiet in London, 

 there is nothing like its quietness." 



In 1842, his " Structure and Distribution of Coral 

 Reefs " was published, a book which cost him, he 

 says, " twenty months of hard work, as I had to 

 read every work on the islands of the Pacific, and 

 to consult many charts." Of this book, Professor 

 Geikie says : " This well known treatise, the most 

 original of all its author's geological memoirs, has 

 become one of the classics of geological literature. 

 The origin of those remarkable rings of coral-rock 

 in mid-ocean has given rise to much speculation, 

 but no satisfactory solution of the problem has 

 been proposed. After visiting many of them, and 

 examining also coral reefs that fringe islands and 

 continents, he offered a theory which, for sim- 

 plicity and grandeur, strikes every reader with 

 astonishment. . . . No more admirable example 

 of scientific method was ever given to the world, 

 and, even if he had written nothing else, this trea- 

 tise alone would have placed Darwin in the very 

 front of investigators of nature." 



Lyell wrote to Darwin concerning this book : 

 " It is all true, but do not natter yourself that you 



