382 LIFE AT DOWN. /ETAT. 33-45. [1852. 



becoming vigorous. You ask about water-cure. I take at 

 intervals of two or three months, five or six weeks of mode- 

 rately severe treatment, and always with good effect. Do 

 you come here, I pray and beg whenever you can find time ; 

 you cannot tell how much pleasure it would give me and E. 

 I have finished the 1st vol. for the Ray Society of Peduncula- 

 ted Cirripedes, which, as I think you are a member, you will 

 soon get. Read what I describe on the sexes of Ibla and 

 Scalpellum. I am now at work on the Sessile Cirripedes, and 

 am wonderfully tired of my job : a man to be a systematic 

 naturalist ought to work at least -eight hours per day. You 

 saw through me, when you said that I must have wished to 

 have seen the effects of the [word illegible] Debacle, for I was 

 saying a week ago to E., that had I been as I was in old days, 

 I would have been certainly off that hour. You ask after 

 Erasmus ; he is much as usual, and constantly more or less 

 unwell. Susan * is much better, and very flourishing and 

 happy. Catherine* is at Rome, and has enjoyed it in a 

 degree that is quite astonishing to my old dry bones. And 

 now I think I have told you enough, and more than enough 

 about the house of Darwin ; so my dear old friend, farewell. 

 What pleasant times we had in drinking coffee in your rooms 

 at Christ's College, and think of the glories of Crux major.f 

 Ah, in those days there were no professions for sons, no ill- 

 health to fear for them, no Californian gold, no French 

 invasions. How paramount the future is to the present when 

 one is surrounded by children. My dread is hereditary ill- 

 health. Even death is better for them. 



My dear Fox, your sincere friend, 



C. DARWIN. 



P.S. Susan has lately been working in a way which I 

 think truly heroic about the scandalous violation of the Act 

 against children climbing chimneys. We have set up a 



* His sisters. f The beetle Panagceus crux major. 



