366 CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. 



will be believed till you are growing bald, like me, 

 with hard work and vexation at the incredulity of 

 the world." 



Darwin's next work, on the " Volcanic Islands 

 Visited during the Voyage of the Beagle," was 

 published in 1844. This book, he said, " cost me 

 eighteen months." His third geological book, 

 " Geological Observations on South America," was 

 published in 1846. 



Meantime, tired of smoky London, Darwin pur- 

 chased a home in Down, a retired village five or 

 six hundred feet above the sea. The house was 

 a square brick building, of three stories, vine-cov- 

 ered, in the midst of eighteen acres. "Its chief 

 merit," Darwin writes to a friend, " is its extreme 

 rurality. I think I was never in a more perfectly 

 quiet country." Here, for fo,rty years, Darwin 

 lived the isolated life of a student, producing the 

 books that made him the most noted scientist 

 of his century. Of these years, Mr. Darwin said : 

 " Few persons can have lived a more retired life 

 than we have done. Besides short visits to the 

 houses of relations, and occasionally to the seaside 

 or elsewhere, we have gone nowhere. During the 

 first part of our residence we went a little into 

 society, and received a few friends here ; but my 

 health almost always suffered from the excitement. 

 ... I have, therefore, been compelled for many 

 years to give up all dinner parties. . . . From the 

 same cause I have been able to invite here very 

 few scientific acquaintances. My chief enjoyment 



