l872 AT GIBRALTAR 



395 



you, as we should to an honoured and much loved brother. I 

 am sure that you will return this feeling, and will therefore 

 be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you in some degree, 

 as this will be a happiness to us to the last day of our lives. 

 Let me add that our plan occurred to several of your friends at 

 nearly the same time and quite independently of one another. 

 — My dear Huxley, your affectionate friend, 



Charles Darwin. 



It was a poignant moment. " What have I done to 

 deserve this ? " he exclaimed. The relief from anxiety, so 

 generously proffered, entirely overcame him ; and for the 

 first time, he allowed himself to confess that in the long 

 struggle against ill-health, he had been beaten ; but, as he 

 said, only enough to teach him humility. 



His first trip in search of health was in 1872, when he 

 obtained two months' leave of absence, and prepared to go 

 to the Mediterranean. His lectures to women on Physi- 

 ology at South Kensington were taken over by Dr. Michael 

 Foster, who had already acted as his substitute in the Ful- 

 lerian course of 1868. But even on this cruise after health 

 he was not altogether free from business. The stores of 

 biscuit at Gibraltar and Malta were infested with a small 

 grub and its cocoons. Complaints to the home authorities 

 were met by the answer that the stores were prepared from 

 the purest materials and sent out perfectly -free from the 

 pest. Discontent among the men was growing serious, 

 when he was requested by the Admiralty to investigate the 

 nature of the grub and the best means of preventing its 

 ravages. In the end he found that the biscuits were packed 

 within range of stocks of newly arrived, vmpurified cocoa, 

 from which the eggs were blown into the stores while being 

 packed, and there hatched out. Thereafter the packing was 

 done in another place and the complaints ceased. 



Jan. 3, 1872. 



My dear Dohrn — It is true enough that I am somewhat 

 " erkrankt," though beyond general weariness, incapacity and 

 disgust with things in general, I do not precisely know what 

 is the matter with me. 



Unwillingly, I begin to suspect that I overworked myself 



