1849] LORD STANHOPE. 345 



at Chevening with Lord Mahon, who did me the great honour 

 of calling on me, and how he heard of me I can't guess. I 

 was charmed with Lady Mahon, and any one might have been 

 proud at the pieces of agreeableness which came from her 

 beautiful lips with respect to you. I like old Lord Stanhope 

 very much ; though he abused Geology and Zoology heartily. 

 '' To suppose that the Omnipotent God made a world, found 

 it a failure, and broke it up, and then made it again, and 

 again broke it up, as the Geologists say, is all fiddle faddle." 

 Describing Species of birds and shells, &c., is all fiddle 

 faddle. . . . 



I am heartily glad we shall meet at Birmingham, as I trust 

 we shall, if my health will but keep up. I work now every 

 day at the Cirripedia for 2 J hours, and so get on a little, but 

 very slowly. I sometimes, after being a whole week employed 

 and having described perhaps only two species, agree men- 

 tally with Lord Stanhope, that it is all fiddle faddle ; how- 

 ever, the other day I got a curious case of a unisexual, instead 

 of hermaphrodite cirripede, in which the female had the com- 

 mon cirripedial character, and in two valves of her shell had 

 two little pockets, in each of which she kept a little husband ; 

 I do not know of any other case where a female invariably has 

 two husbands. I have one still odder fact, common to several 

 species, namely, that though they are hermaphrodite, they 

 have small additional, or as I shall call them, complemental 

 males, one specimen itself hermaphrodite had no less than 

 seven^ of these complemental males attached to it. Truly the 

 schemes and wonders of Nature are illimitable. But I am 

 running on as badly about my cirripedia as about Geology ; 

 it makes me groan to think that probably I shall never again 

 have the exquisite pleasure of making out some new district, 

 of evolving geological light out of some troubled dark region. 

 So I must make the best of my Cirripedia. . . . 



