AUTOBIOGRAPHY 13 



people. But, apart from experience of this kind 

 and the opportunities offered for scientific work, 

 to me^personally. the cruise was extremely valu- 

 able. (Tt was good- for me to live under sharp dis- 

 cipline ; to be down on the realities of existence 

 by living on bare necessaries ; to find out how ex- 

 tremely well worth living life seemed to be when 

 one woke up from a night's rest on a soft plank, 

 with the sky for canopy and cocoa and weevilly 

 biscuit the sole prospect for breakfast ; and, 

 more especially, to learn to work for the sake of 

 what I got for myself out of it, even if it all went 

 to the bottom and I along with itj My brother 

 officers were as good fellows as sailors ought to be 

 and generally are, but, naturally, they neither 

 knew nor cared anything about my pursuits, noi 

 understood why I should be so zealous in pursuit 

 of the objects which my friends, the middies, 

 christened " Buffons," after the title conspicuous 

 on a volume of the " Suites & Buffon," which stood 

 on my shelf in the chart room. 



During the four years of our absence, I sent 

 home communication after communication to the 

 " Linnean Society," with the same result as that 

 obtained by Noah when he sent the raven out of 

 his ark. Tired at last of hearing nothing about 

 them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849 I 

 drew up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it 

 to the Royal Society. This was my dove, if I had 

 only known it. But owing to the movements of 



