364 l.IKK AT J)\V.\. .1.1 AT. 33-45. [1848. 



done good service in calling more attention to the subject of 

 the terraces. He protests it is unfair to call the sinking of 

 the sea his theory, for that he with care always speaks of mere 

 change of level, and this is quite true ; but the one section in 

 which he shows how he conceives the sea might sink is so 

 astonishing, that I believe it will with others, as with me, 

 more than counterbalance his previous caution. I hope that 

 you may think better of the book than I do. 



Yours most truly, 



C. DARWIN. 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



October 6th, 1848. 



... I have lately been trying to get up an agitation (but 

 I shall not succeed, and indeed doubt whether I have time 

 and strength to go on with it), against the practice of 

 Naturalists appending for perpetuity the name of the first 

 describer to species. I look at this as a direct premium to 

 hasty work, to naming instead of describing. A species ought 

 to have a name so well known that the addition of the author's 

 name would be superfluous, and a [piece] of empty vanity.* 



* His contempt for the self-re- bridgeshire. He was pleased with 



garding spirit in a naturalist is his capture, and of course carried 



illustrated by an anecdote, for which it home in triumph. Some years 



I am indebted to Rev. L. Blome- afterwards, the voyage of the Beagle 



field. After speaking of my father's having been made in the interim, 



love of Entomology at Cambridge, talking over old times with him, I 



Mr. Blomefield continues : " He reverted to this circumstance, and 



occasionally came over from Cam- asked if he remembered it. ' Oh 



bridge to my Vicarage at Swaffham yes,' (he said,) ' I remember it well ; 



Bulbeck, and we went out together and I was selfish enough to keep 



to collect insects in the woods at the specimen, when you were col- 



Bottisham Hall, close at hand, or lecting materials for a Fauna of 



made longer excursions in the Fens. Cambridgeshire, and for a local 



On one occasion he captured in a museum in the Philosophical 



large bag net, with which he used Society.' He followed this up with 



vigorously to sweep the weeds and some remarks on the pettiness of 



long grass, a rare coleopterous in- collectors, who aimed at nothing 



sect, one of the Lepturida, which I beyond filling their cabinets with 



myself had never taken in Cam- rare things." 



