On board the " Beagle " 345 



prevalent catastrophism, and that his mind was becoming a field in 

 which the seeds which Lyell was afterwards to sow would "fall on 

 good ground"? 



The second period of Darwin's geological career — the five years 

 spent by him on board the Beagle — was the one in which by far the 

 most important stage in his mental development was accomplished. 

 He left England a healthy, vigorous and enthusiastic collector ; he 

 returned five years later with unique experiences, the germs of great 

 ideas, and a knowledge which placed him at once in the foremost ranks 

 of the geologists of that day. Huxley has well said that "Darwin found 

 on board the Beagle that which neither the pedagogues of Shrews- 

 bury, nor the professoriate of Edinburgh, nor the tutors of Cambridge 

 had managed to give him V Darwin himself wrote, referring to the 

 date at which the voyage was expected to begin : " My second life 

 will then commence, and it shall be as a birthday for the rest of my 

 life 2 "; and looking back on the voyage after forty years, he wrote : 

 "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important 

 event in my life, and has determined my whole career;... I have 

 always felt that I owe to the voyage the first real training or 

 education of my mind ; I was led to attend closely to several branches 

 of natural history, and thus my powers of observation were improved, 

 though they were always fairly developed 3 ." 



Referring to these general studies in natural history, however, 

 Darwin adds a very significant remark: "The investigation of the 

 geology of the places visited was far more important, as reasoning 

 here comes into play. On first examining a new district nothing can 

 appear more hopeless than the chaos of rocks ; but by recording 

 the stratification and nature of the rocks and fossils at many points, 

 always reasoning and predicting what will be found elsewhere, light 

 soon begins to dawn on the district, and the structure of the whole 

 becomes more or less intelligible 4 ." 



The famous voyage began amid doubts, discouragements and dis- 

 appointments. Fearful of heart-disease, sad at parting from home 

 and friends, depressed by sea-sickness, the young explorer, after 

 being twice driven back by baffling winds, reached the great object 

 of his ambition, the island of Teneriffe, only to find that, owing to 

 quarantine regulations, landing was out of the question. 



But soon this inauspicious opening of the voyage was forgotten. 

 Henslow had advised his pupil to take with him the first volume of 

 Ly ell's Principles of Geology, then just published — but cautioned 

 him (as nearly all the leaders in geological science at that day would 



1 Proc. Roy. Soc. Vol. xliv. (1888), p. ix. 2 L. L. i. p. 214. 



3 L. L. i. p. 61. * L. L. i. p. 62. 



