SIR GEORGE DARWIN 153 



from certain eminent people, e.g. John of Gaunt. 

 This is shown in the pedigrees which George wrote 

 out, and in the elaborate genealogical tree pub- 

 lished in Professor's Pearson's Life of Francis 

 Gallon. George's parents had moved to Down in 

 September 1842, and he was born to those quiet 

 surroundings of which Charles Darwin wrote, "My 

 life goes on hke clock-work, and I am fixed on the 

 spot where I shall end it." It would have been 

 difficult to find a more retired place so near London. 

 In 1 842 a coach drive of some twenty miles was the 

 only means of access to Down ; and even now that 

 railways Tiave crept closer to it, it is singularly out 

 of the world, with Uttle to suggest the neighbour- 

 hood of London, unless it be the dull haze of smoke 

 that sometimes clouds the sky. In 1842 such a 

 village, communicating with the main lines of 

 traffic only by stony tortuous lanes, may well have 

 been enabled to retain something of its primitive 

 character. Nor is it hard to believe in the smugglers 

 and their strings of pack-horses making their way 

 up from the lawless old villages of the Weald, of 

 which the memory then still lingered.^ 



George retained throughout life his deep love 

 for Down. For the lawn with its bright strip of 

 flowers, and for the row of big lime trees that 

 bordered it ; for the two yew trees between which 

 we children had our swing, and for many another 

 characteristic which had become as dear and as 

 familiar to him as a human face. He retained his 

 youthful love of the "Sand-walk," a little wood far 



* Life and Letten of Charles Darwin, Vol. i., p. 319. 



