STARTING POINTS. 49 



long investigation. Darwin read one of his 

 first papers, " On the Formation of Vegetable 

 Mould," before the Geological Society of Lon- 

 don, November 1, 1837; and on the same ap- 

 parently insignificant subject he published the 

 last book of his life. 



While collecting in the Chonos Archipelago, 

 Southern Chile, he found numbers of an insig- 

 nificant little cirriped, none more than one 

 tenth of an inch long, embedded in the shell of 

 Concholepas peruviana. 1 The zoological mate- 

 rial of his trip was turned over to specialists 

 for description, he furnishing the field notes 

 and editing the publications. Much zoological 

 information was thus given to the world, but 

 none of all that material ever served as a start- 

 ing point for a great investigation. The little 

 abnormal cirriped was left to Darwin himself; 

 probably because it was too small an affair to 

 be taken charge of by others. In his hands it 

 became the germ of a monograph on the Cirri- 

 pedia, which is still the classical literature 

 of the group. To determine its position he 

 studied the structure of as many genera as 

 possible. Dr. J. E. Gray, who had already 

 collected a large amount of material for a mon- 



1 A Monograph of the Cirripedia, Vol. I., Preface, p. 5 ; 

 Vol. II. pp. 566-586. 



4 



