42 CHARLES DARWIN 



out on every page with the quaintest elusiveness. We 

 are always just on the very point of catching it ; and 

 every now and again we do actually all but catch it in 

 essence and spirit, though ever still its bodily shape 

 persistently evades us. Questions of geographical dis- 

 tribution, of geological continuity, of the influence of 

 climate, of the modifiability of instinct, of the effects 

 of surrounding conditions, absorb the young observer's 

 vivid interest at every step, wherever he lands. He is 

 all unconsciously collecting notes and materials in pro- 

 fuse abundance for his great work; he is thinking in 

 rough outline the new thoughts which are hereafter to 

 revolutionise the thought of humanity. 



Five years are a great slice out of a man's life : 

 those five years of ceaseless wandering by sea and land 

 were spent by Charles Darwin in accumulating endless 

 observations and hints for the settlement of the profound 

 fundamental problems in which he was even then so 

 deeply interested. The ' Beagle ' sailed from England 

 to the Cape de Verdes, and already, even before she had 

 touched her first land, the young naturalist had observed 

 f with interest that the impalpably fine dust which fell on 

 V deck contained no less than sixty-seven distinct organic 

 forms, two of them belonging to species peculiar to 

 South America. In some of the dust he found particles 

 of stone so very big that they measured 'above the 

 thousandth of an inch square ; ' and after this fact, says 

 the keen student, ' one need not be surprised at the 

 diffusion of the far lighter and smaller sporules of crypto- 

 gamic plants.' Would Erasmus Darwin have noticed 

 these minute points and their implications one wonders ? 

 Probably not. May we not see in the observation 



