CHARLES EGBERT DARWIN. 357 



and sole employment throughout life has been 

 scientific work ; and the excitement from such work 

 makes me for the time forget, or drives quite away, 

 my daily discomfort." 



At Down, Darwin worked for eight years on two 

 large volumes concerning cirripedia (barnacles), 

 describing all the known living species; the ex- 

 tinct species, or fossil cirripedes, were in two 

 smaller volumes. The first books were published 

 by the Kay Society, between 1851 and 1854 ; the 

 others by the Palseontographical Society. About 

 two years out of the eight were lost through illness. 

 Sometimes he became half discouraged. He wrote 

 a friend, " I have been so steadily going downhill, 

 I cannot help doubting whether I can ever crawl a 

 little uphill again. Unless I can, enough to work 

 a little, I hope my life may be very short, for to 

 lie on a sofa all day and do nothing but give trouble J*- 

 to the best and kindest of wives and good, dear 

 children is dreadful." 



Darwin doubted, in after life, " whether the work 

 was worth the consumption of so much time," but 

 Professor Huxley thinks he "never did a wiser 

 thing than when he devoted himself to the years 

 of patient toil which the cirriped-book cost him. 

 . . . The value of the cirriped monograph lies 

 not merely in the fact that it is a very admirable 

 piece of work, and constituted a great addition to 

 positive knowledge, but still more in the circum- 

 stance that it was a piece of critical self-discipline, 

 the effect of which manifested itself in everything 



